


A Reign of Silence

by Lomonaaeren



Series: Cloak and Dagger [12]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Auror Partners, Aurors, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-14
Updated: 2015-06-18
Packaged: 2018-04-04 10:01:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 78,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4133367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the debacle that occurred in the Head Auror’s office, Harry and Draco are hot on the trail of the blue-eyed twisted. If, of course, they can avoid the scrutiny of the Ministry, Draco’s parents, and everyone else who has a reason to be disappointed in them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Investiture

**Author's Note:**

> Twelfth part of the Cloak and Dagger series. Don't read this one first!

The letter was heavy, so heavy that Draco knew at once where it had come from. It was loaded with official seals, too, some of them so old that Draco wouldn’t be surprised if they hadn’t been used for the last two hundred years.  
  
Then he picked it up, turned it over, and saw the wax that sealed the back shut. It was black. Draco grimaced.  _Three_ hundred years, then.  
  
“Draco? Who is that from?”  
  
Harry was looking up at Draco from the dining room table, his mouth smeared with butter and honey and his napkin covered with marmalade. Draco shook his head at him. He would have liked, he sometimes thought, to have a neater lover, one who didn’t like all  _three_ of those and so wouldn’t end up with the mixture covering him.  
  
But then Harry looked at him, and he found it hard to imagine yielding Harry for anything.  
  
“My parents,” Draco said, and sat down at the table with the letter in front of him, because he knew what Harry would insist on doing. Draco couldn’t even object. In the circumstances, the spells Harry would use to detect curses and hexes were a better idea than they would usually be.   
  
Sure enough, Harry cast with a steady hand but with a dark, pissed gleam in his eyes. Draco leaned back and watched him. Harry was messy and loud and still too prone to act as if Draco’s life was more valuable than his own, but Draco couldn’t have asked for a better partner—not really. All the other things that made him annoying and exasperating were also the things that made Draco love him.  
  
 _Even the messiness has probably helped him survive somehow. Maybe someone who was chasing him tripped on a banana peel once._  
  
The image soothed Draco and cheered him, and Harry looked up to meet his eyes and smiled a little, but shook his head.  
  
“I can’t really detect anything on it,” he admitted. “They might have used spells that are too subtle for me to feel, though.” He nodded at Draco and went back to eating.  
  
Draco watched the letter thoughtfully. The last time he had seen his parents, he had broken a mirror that had attacked him, and it had turned out to be linked to a necklace his mother was wearing, which shattered and injured her. Whatever the letter contained, it wasn’t going to be an offer of reconciliation, or to make him their heir again, the way they had once said they would do if he would give up Harry.  
  
In the end, there was nothing to do but open it—though with charms that broke the wax and unfolded the envelope, rather than his bare hands. Harry nodded his judicious approval from the other end of the table. Draco watched a small pat of butter fall into Harry’s lap, and used the sight to give him strength before he turned and read the bloody letter.  
  
 _Draco Malfoy,_ it said, at the beginning, only there was a thick dark line under his name that made Draco sit up and stare, because it looked more like charcoal than ink.  
  
Draco knew what that meant. He had not thought his parents would ever do such a thing to him, not when they had been content to ignore him for seven years, but he knew what it meant. He reached out and took Harry’s hand.  
  
Harry glanced at him sharply, once, then nodded and went back to eating. But his hand was in Draco’s, and Draco could cling to it as an anchor against a world that seemed to be sliding and tilting and bobbing around him.  
  
 _This is to declare blood feud against you._  
  
There were a few lines more, but Draco ignored them. They were meant to explain what a blood feud was to the ignorant, and he knew. He more than knew. His fingers itched to shred the parchment, and he only managed to withdraw them and nod to Harry to read the letter by an effort of will that he hadn’t had to use in those seven years.  
  
Then he closed his eyes and turned his head away.   
  
*  
  
Harry read the letter, frowning. The first two lines seemed simple enough, but he didn’t know what that thick black underlining beneath Draco’s name meant. The second paragraph seemed meant to clear it up. It didn’t.  
  
 _We are against you blood, feeling, thought, and soul. We will replace your blood. We will raise barriers of pride. We will enact forgetting. We will find the opportunity to take your soul._  
  
It was signed with both Lucius’s and Narcissa’s names. Harry found himself looking for some sign of shakiness in Narcissa’s signature, and shook his head. Just because she had been wounded by the necklace didn’t mean she couldn’t sign a letter.  
  
“I understand that it’s bad,” Harry said quietly, looking at Draco. Draco’s eyes were shut, his head bowed, a hopelessness in the slope of his neck that Harry felt as if he’d hated for years even though this was the first time he’d seen it. “But you’re going to have to tell me the specific reasons it is.”  
  
Draco sat up with a gasp, as though surfacing from deep underwater. “This is it, then,” he said, with his voice viciously cracking. “They’re going to change themselves, physically, with enchantments, so that their blood is completely different from mine. They’re going to alter the family tapestry and the official records so that they never had a son. They’ll  _Obliviate_ themselves to forget my existence. And, if they get the chance, they’ll send a Dementor after me so that I stop existing on all levels.”  
  
All the plates on the table shattered down the middle.  
  
Draco leaped to his feet. Harry surged after him, shaking his head. It made sense that Draco would think this was some side-effect of his parents’ magic, right after he’d spoken those portentous words. “I’m sorry, Draco, I’m sorry,” he murmured, moving around the table and gathering Draco in his arms. “I didn’t mean to do that. I just got so angry at the thought of what they’re going to do to you.”  
  
Draco nodded and leaned on him for a moment before he stepped back. “We can’t count on aid from them, ever again,” he said, remotely, retreating behind that mask Harry had seen before whenever someone mentioned his parents. “But they also won’t interfere with us. They want to forget I existed. They want to sever any connection between us.”  
  
“Sending a Dementor after you doesn’t sound like ignoring you,” Harry retorted.  
  
Draco blinked at him. “I—well, yes, I suppose it doesn’t,” he said. “But  _they_ won’t do it. They’ll just contract someone who works with Dementors. There are Dark wizards who do.”  
  
Harry curled his lip, revolted, even as he began to cast  _Reparo_ on some of the dishes. “How do they do that without the Dementors taking their own souls? That’s all they cared about, I thought.”  
  
Draco shrugged, leaning an elbow on the table and watching Harry put the halves of the plates back together. “The Ministry was able to work with the Dementors for years, when they guarded Azkaban. They can strike bargains of some kind. I have to admit, I don’t know why they would want to.” He tried to smile.  
  
“It’s revolting,” Harry repeated, and wondered for a second if there was a way that he could punish the Malfoys. Then he shook his head. Not publically, because this would probably turn out to be one of those pure-blood things—like not inviting Muggleborns to certain parties and ensuring that their children never married one—that everyone knew about and would never discuss. Useless to try to get Skeeter or the papers interested in it then.  
  
Abruptly, he cocked his head. Something else had come to him, and he wondered if he could say it without risking Draco’s anger.  
  
“You can say it.”  
  
Harry jumped and looked at Draco. “I didn’t know you were  _that_ good at Legilimency,” he said, and then finally took note of how pale Draco’s face looked. He cast a Refreshing Charm on a glass of pumpkin juice, which would make it act a little like Pepper-Up Potion, and handed the glass to Draco.  
  
Draco grimaced, because he usually hated it in the mornings, but swallowed obediently before he answered. “I recognize  _those_ particular looks on your face. You’re always wondering if you can do something, and get away with it. I ought to know it, because I tried to follow you and get in the way whenever I saw you wearing it.”  
  
Harry grinned at him, and spent a second rubbing his arm. Draco finished the drink, set the glass down, folded his arms, and repeated, “You can say it.”  
  
Harry nodded. “Is there any way to force them to withdraw this—petition?” He knew from Draco’s patient look that that wasn’t the right word, but it was the politest one he could come up with at the moment, even if it was wrong. “I mean, if I could do something that would force your parents to stop this—”  
  
“What could you do?” Draco asked, his voice flat, exhausted. “You couldn’t make me back into an acceptable heir for them, and I  _forbid_ you to try.”  
  
Harry grinned. “I know.” He let the grin fade, and decided that Draco was right and he might as well talk in an unguarded way, since he seemed to be already doing it. “What I mean is—if I offered to duel both of them, with the prize if I win leaving you in the family, do you think they would listen?”  
  
*  
  
Draco stared at him. Then he rubbed his eyes. But when he looked again, it was still Harry standing there, his Harry, with his hair disheveled from the pillow and a look of aching certainty in his eyes.  
  
Draco shook his head. “Duels don’t usually have  _prizes_ ,” was all he could think of to say.  
  
“Some of them do,” Harry said. “I would read the books in the Auror library sometimes when I was going mad doing research for an essay and  _had_ to look at something else, and wizards used to use professional duelists when they wanted to win a bet. Whoever won got to demand a forfeit from the other person, at least,” he added, eyes half-closing and head twisting so that he looked more like Draco’s Harry.  
  
“All right, some of them do,” Draco admitted. “But it’s an old custom, and not one that I’m sure my parents would go for.”  
  
Harry snorted at the letter. “Older than declaring blood feud on your son?”  
  
Draco shuffled uneasily. “What you have to know about my parents is that they don’t care  _that_ much about the antiquity of pure-blood customs,” he said. “They would feel free to cite how old the dueling custom is as a reason for ignoring your challenge, but they chose to declare blood feud because they knew it would hurt me the most.”  
  
“Then they’re shitty people.”  
  
Draco blinked. It wasn’t a view of the situation that had previously occurred to him, but he could see Harry’s eyes glowing, and he knew Harry wouldn’t back away now.  
  
“Well,” he said. “Yes. I think they might even agree with that. The difference is that they would be proud of being shitty people by a Muggleborn’s definition.”  
  
Harry eased closer, lifting one hand to touch the side of Draco’s face. Draco turned his head and shut his eyes. For a moment, his mind rang with the echoes of what his parents would say if they could see him and Harry touching that way, and then things smoothed out and became still, gentle, silent.  
  
“I hate them for doing this to you,” Harry whispered, stroking up and down and making Draco sway into him. “I hate them so much.”  
  
Draco kissed his hand and then took it away, because this would only lead to bed if they continued, and he thought they needed to think about other things—shocking as it would be to Harry if he said that. “I know, but we have to decide how we’ll respond,” he said. “Any letter in return will be ignored. That includes a letter that you write them trying to get them to duel you,” he added, when Harry opened his mouth. “They’ve decided to cut me out of their lives. That’s the end of it. They’ll ignore people associated with me just as viciously.”  
  
Harry was silent for a long moment, frowning. Then he said, “There might be something else I can do. Well.” He nodded to Draco. “At the very least, I’ll make sure a Dementor can’t take your soul.”  
  
Draco smiled weakly at him. “Thank you.” But he was thinking about the tales he had heard of blood feuds in the past that included the destruction of the soul, where the Dementor could appear at any time, from Diagon Alley to the victim’s own home, and have his soul drained before he could object.  
  
Harry’s arm tightened around him. “I mean it,” he whispered, and then he was kissing Draco again, open and full-mouthed, and Draco decided that a short interlude in bed wouldn’t be so bad after all.  
  
*  
  
Harry was aware, as never before, of the eyes and murmurs that followed them as they made their way through the Ministry to the Socrates office. Most of the time, he tried to ignore the people who stared at him, because it was  _all_ for stupid reasons. They either admired what he had done in the past too excessively, or they believed the Ministry’s and the papers’ lies about him.  
  
Now, though, he took notice of who looked at them and who whispered and who turned away, and he met their eyes if they stared at him and Draco for anything like long enough. In the end, they ducked and flinched and moved, and Harry and Draco were the ones who walked untouched, guiltless as they were, through the building, and down.  
  
“Hard, aren’t you?” Draco said, only for his ears.  
  
Harry shrugged as they pushed the door of their office open. His heartbeat was up, his blood roaring in his veins, but not because of the idiots they had passed. There was another danger here in this office, another confrontation that would hurt much more. “If they really thought we were murderers, they would avoid us, not whisper like that,” he said out of the corner of his mouth. “But they aren’t brave enough to come up and tell us they believe in the truth, either. So let them squirm. It’s the only price we can make them pay.”  
  
Draco started to respond, but pulled up and stared at the man who stood in front of Rudie’s desk. Harry put his hand in the middle of Draco’s back, as though to push him forwards, but really to feel the coiled tension in his muscles.  
  
Yes, that tension was far worse than it would be for a simple, accidental meeting, or for another Auror being here. Harry moved forwards, so he was the one in front when the new Auror turned around.  
  
Harry probably would have called him ordinary if he’d known him, or was meeting him without Draco. He had mild dark blue eyes, dark hair that hung absolutely straight to his shoulders, and a grey shirt and trousers visible beneath the Auror robes. He nodded to Harry and focused on Draco.  
  
Because the tension was there beneath Harry’s hand, though, Harry thought of how an expression that neutral could hide dislike, and he watched the bulges of the wizard’s sleeves for signs of a wand.  
  
“Malfoy,” the man murmured. “They told me I would be working with you, but I didn’t really believe them. I thought your parents would never let you end up in a place like this.”  
  
“You’re going to be working with  _me,_ Elder, and don’t you forget it.”  
  
Harry started as Rudie stepped into the office, swinging her cloak off to hang it on a hook. She had been the confrontation he was dreading, since he  _had_ played a large part in her partner going mad, but she acted now as if she barely saw him. Her attention was on Elder, and the way that he leaned back on her desk, his hands planted on piles of file folders. A snarl split her face.  
  
Harry wondered suddenly if Rudie had a flaw, the potential for becoming twisted. He’d never seen her show any exceptional abilities, but then, Draco didn’t either unless you knew what to look for. Harry’s visions of possible murders were more well-known.  
  
“My apologies, Isla,” Elder said, and bowed a little to her before he focused back on Malfoy. “But we’re going to be members of the same Corps, and that means I want a few answers from Mr. Malfoy here. Why—”  
  
“His name is  _Auror_ Malfoy,” Harry said, stepping fully in front of Draco so that Elder had to look at him alone. “Though I can see why it might have slipped your mind, since you don’t seem used to courtesy.”  
  
Elder’s eyes widened, and for a moment he stood so still that Harry could identify the outline of his wand in his left sleeve. He was probably right-handed, then, and would go for a cross-body draw. Harry knew relatively few Aurors who had the habit he himself had perfected, of shaking his wand out into his dominant hand.   
  
“Harry Potter,” Elder whispered. “I knew that people were telling me you were lovers and partners with Malfoy, but I didn’t believe it.”  
  
“Then you’re stupid as well as unobservant, Harris,” Draco said from behind Harry, in the tone that told Harry he’d better move out of the way now. He did, and left Draco to give Elder a tight smile and nod. “It’s been all the Ministry can talk about for weeks now.”  
  
“Sometimes I don’t listen to petty gossip,” Elder said, and gave Draco the kind of smile that said he was trying too hard to be superior. Harry had seen a  _lot_ of those smiles in his first year, from mature Aurors who were trying to pretend that Harry’s new reputation as a killer of Dark Lords didn’t frighten them. The ones who really were better just went ahead and did well in front of Harry, instead of bragging about how much they could.  
  
“Only  _sometimes_ ,” Draco said, and walked past Harry with his steps a perfect glide. Harry matched him, returning a glare for Elder’s wide-eyed look. He didn’t care if Elder thought him hostile and a threat. In fact, the more Elder thought that, the better-pleased Harry would be, because it might mean Elder would leave him alone.  
  
Elder started to open his mouth, but Rudie reached out and slapped her hand over it. “We have a case,” she said, and nodded to Harry and Draco before picking up one of the files and sweeping out the door. She paused in the corridor, though, and turned neatly on one foot, staring back at Elder. “Did you forget English?  _We have a case,_ I said.”  
  
Elder hesitated, looking at her and back at Draco, as if he couldn’t believe that someone would deny him the right to confront an old enemy. Harry swung towards him, but he thought it was Rudie’s snarl that finally made Elder hunch his shoulders and hurry out the door.  
  
Harry waited until the door had been shut for a few minutes and Draco had taken his seat behind his desk, staring straight ahead. He wouldn’t slump and give in here, Harry knew. The wards on the office had changed, and what might have been unobserved a fortnight ago would now be watched. Harry bent towards him and lowered his voice so anyone watching through the wards would have that much more trouble picking up what he was saying. “Talk.”  
  
“I didn’t mean not to talk about him,” Draco murmured, still looking straight ahead. “I didn’t deliberately keep his name from you. I never thought he would be assigned as Rudie’s partner.”  
  
Harry nodded. “I know that. You don’t have any of the same problems I did with deliberately keeping secrets.” He rubbed the middle of Draco’s back where his hand had rested during the confrontation, hoping to loosen up some muscles. No point in holding back from touching Draco now, when everyone knew they were lovers.  
  
Draco gave him a dry smile, and then stretched and flexed, rolling his neck back, loosening up the cramped muscles in the middle of his spine as well as he could. Harry went on rubbing. He appreciated the level of care that Draco was trying to give himself right now, and wanted to encourage it.  
  
“I met him on a case,” Draco said. “One I handled when I was still with Kellen.” Harry nodded again. He would have asked more about Draco’s former partner, dead just like his, but the case he’d died on was sealed, and there were Ministry standards that even Harry respected. “I never thought…well. He discovered a series of clues that Kellen and I might have discovered, but we swept a room and were impatient and didn’t see them. It was those clues that led to the arrest of the killer, but someone died before then, someone we might have saved before if we’d attended to all the evidence.”  
  
Harry said nothing, but moved behind Draco and began to massage his shoulders. Just because Draco didn’t wallow and brood on the guilt that he felt over the deaths of victims the way Harry did was no reason to think he was callous towards them.  
  
“That feels good,” Draco whispered, dropping forwards until his head rested with a  _thunk_ on the desk.  
  
“Good.” Harry kept up the slow, rolling rubbing. “And then?”  
  
“Elder realized that he was the one who’d found those clues,” Draco whispered. “But he couldn’t rest content with the Ministry’s official commendation. He came down and told me off for not finding them—I would say that I don’t know why he blamed me, instead of both me and Kellen, but, well.”  
  
Harry nodded. Draco had faced his own degree of prejudice in the Ministry.   
  
“I got angry and told him off. Insinuated some things that I shouldn’t have, without my family’s power to back me up. I frightened him, and he’s the sort who can’t bear to admit he’s frightened. So now he’s taking his chance to come back at me.”  
  
“I’ll stop him, too,” Harry whispered, bending down and letting his lips brush the nape of Draco’s neck. “I’ll stop them  _all._ And in the meantime, we can concentrate on the hunt for Ernhardt.”  
  
Draco’s hand reached back and gripped Harry’s for a moment, hard, crushingly. Then he sat up and turned around. “Where’s that transcript of your conversation with Morningstar?”


	2. In Search

“Well, you must admit that a glamour of a desert seen out a window, and a large room on the ground floor covered with mirrors, isn’t much to go on.”  
  
Harry inclined his head in irritation. He was still looking at the transcript of his conversation with Nancy Morningstar, the twisted who had claimed that Blue Eyes had caught her and held her captive. Harry couldn’t remember the conversation itself, since Morningstar had used her powers to obliterate that from his mind, but he could be sure that this was what he had written down; Morningstar’s powers didn’t change writing. “I know, but that’s all she really said about it.”  
  
“Then we’ll have to do what we can to find it.”  
  
Harry smiled at Draco and touched his arm as Draco laid his own copy of the transcript back on Harry’s desk. “I appreciate you looking at this at all. It’s a clever idea, to try and track down Blue Eyes by what his prisoners said about him.”  
  
Draco opened his mouth to answer, and then shut it again as Elder stepped back into the Socrates office. Harry hated watching the way Draco's mouth tightened and his eyes went shuttered and careful. Elder was responsible for that. Harry shifted his body again, ready to rise and defend his partner.  
  
“I only came to ask a question,” Elder said, walking towards Rudie’s desk with his hands up.   
  
Harry said nothing, but glanced back at the writing from his conversation with Morningstar as though that would remove Elder from his consideration. Draco was working, too, his head bowed, his cheeks flushed.  
  
“Is it true that you promised Isla she could kill her partner if and when you caught up with her?” Elder asked.  
  
Harry glanced up. Elder’s gaze was as steady as a stream of thrown curses, but it was on Draco. Still, this was a question Harry knew the answer to, so he didn’t see why he shouldn’t answer as well as Draco. “We did,” he said. “We know that she blames herself for not paying more attention to Macgeorge. Letting her have the kill seems appropriate.”  
  
“Are you sure that you can’t save her?” Elder countered, turning to Harry as if Draco had never interested him. “That’s the sticking point. Isla doesn’t want to believe that Macgeorge is beyond help. There isn’t  _anything_ that could save a possessed twisted?”  
  
Harry spread his hands. “Nothing we can find. And our one attempt to make Blue Eyes stop jumping from body to body didn’t work very well. He’ll know that tactic now, and he’ll fight back against it. If he did leave Macgeorge’s body, then he would probably leave it dead, and move on to a new victim as his primary host.” He had to assume that Elder knew everything about the case there was to know now, the way that Rudie and Harry and Draco had handled Blue Eyes and Macgeorge, because of the questions he was asking.  
  
Elder waited for a few minutes with his mouth twisted. Then he said, “I don’t like this situation.”  
  
“None of us like it,” Harry said. “But we need to make sure that we do what we can to catch Macgeorge and the twisted. If this is the tactic that works, so be it.”  
  
Elder stood there a little while longer, looking at Draco, who labored on with his head bowed. Then he turned and stomped out of the room. Harry sat back and stretched his arms above his head, shaking his shoulders. After just a short time around Elder, he found himself wanting to break out like that, wanting to object.  
  
“I hate him.”  
  
Harry blinked and turned his head. “You do? I thought you disliked him.”  
  
Draco leaned back and rubbed his neck as though he found Elder’s presence cramping, too. His gaze remained on the patch of floor where Elder had stood. “This is more than that. He’s trying to make me complicit in something I’m not complicit in, and make me into a criminal where I’m not.”  
  
Harry nodded. He had the feeling that Elder was trying to blame and trap Draco in something, whether the something was the original crime Draco had overlooked or not. “It’s all right. We’ll go hunting, and avoid him.”  
  
“Go hunting how?” Draco waved his hand at the papers in front of him and laughed humorlessly. “It’s not like we have any idea about where to begin.”  
  
“I know,” Harry said, and stood up, reaching for his cloak. “But that only makes it more urgent that we begin  _somewhere_. We know that the Ministry seized Ernhardt’s house and effects, but I don’t think they did anything with them. We should start there, shouldn’t we?”  
  
Draco blinked and stared at Harry with his mouth open slightly. Then he nodded firmly and stood up. “Yes, that’s a good idea. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that before.”  
  
Harry smiled at him. “You had other things to think of. For that matter, why didn’t  _I_ think of it?”  
  
They left the office, bickering amiably about who should have thought of it first, and Harry was relieved to see Draco’s head lift and his steps straighten out. He could forget about Elder and the effect the man had on him as long as he was doing useful work, then.  
  
It was a fact Harry intended to exploit as often as he could.  
  
*  
  
Draco frowned as he looked at the pile of papers in front of him. Most of the time, the Ministry would be more careful when cataloguing the possessions of one of its employees who had turned out traitorous. This time, he supposed, was an exception, and probably related to the high position Ernhardt had held and the extremely strange way he’d left it.  
  
Draco shook his head and turned towards the neater pile of papers Harry had pulled out and put on the table beside them, which contained the files of the Socrates Aurors. Draco flipped idly through them and had to put them down on the table when he found his own folder. He wasn’t going to be tempted to look. He knew he would probably find notes about how Ernhardt had planned to use him against Harry, and he was going to ignore that as hard as he could.  
  
“Draco, look at this.”  
  
Draco bent down beside Harry, who had Macgeorge’s folder in his hands. Draco grunted, trying to indicate that he doubted it could tell them anything useful. Ernhardt had focused on him and Harry as threats among the Socrates Aurors, or especially Harry, since he had used Draco to try and slow him down. Macgeorge wouldn’t have registered for him until she started trying to hunt him.  
  
But Harry opened it, and there was a photograph of Macgeorge, with notes below that included the words “necromancy” and “danger,” underlined. Draco blinked and bent closer to read the short notations.  
  
 _Involves control over bodiless entities, such as spirits and ghosts. Possibly dangerous? Possibly not. I am not bodiless except in the Passage._  
  
Draco snorted. “It sounds like he was rambling even when he wrote to himself.”  
  
“Doesn’t it?” Harry shook his head. “At least we know now that he was aware of the threat she presented.” He put the folder down and began to wade into another stack of paper, most of it loose.  
  
Draco turned his back and wandered in the direction of boxes that contained Ernhardt’s possessions. There were clothes there, he saw as he opened the first few, and more folders, and what seemed to be the sheets from a bed. He opened more, and picked through jewelry, and shoes, and disassembled chairs.  
  
Then he picked up something that stung his left arm hard enough to make him drop it for a moment.  
  
“Draco?” Harry was immediately at his side, standing on his toes with his hand lightly on Draco’s back. “Do you think that you found something?”  
  
Draco nodded, and picked up the parchment again. Unfolding it, while he cast spells to restrict the violent Dark magic, revealed what looked like a series of random lines at first, and then a map.  
  
Harry’s breath hissed out behind him. Draco obligingly moved to the side so that he could see, and then both of them stared at the parchment.  
  
The lines resolved into shapes, although shapes that didn’t match any part of England Draco had ever seen depicted. There was a lake, or at least a long circle labeled as one, and a squarish rectangle that might have been a house, perhaps a manor house of the kind that pure-blood families had held more commonly in the past. There was also a large, bordered county that seemed to have no name, but had several scribbled lines on it like the world’s worst handwriting.  
  
“This has to be a map to his house, doesn’t it?” Harry muttered. “Why else use those curses to protect it?”  
  
“It doesn’t  _have_ to be,” Draco pointed out, as he turned the map over to see if it made more sense upside-down. “It could be a depiction of something that only exists in his imagination. I have a feeling that Blue Eyes possesses quite a few things like that.”  
  
“Could it be a map of something Unplottable, then?” Harry asked.  
  
Draco let Harry see him rolling his eyes. “By definition, you can’t map something Unplottable,” he snapped.  
  
“Maybe you could if you were looking at the world sideways, the way the twisted look,” Harry said thoughtfully. “Maybe it would make a difference depending on what you imagined or believed, as opposed to what you knew.”  
  
Draco bit his tongue. Harry’s words sounded plausible, he had to admit, but then, they could sound plausible without being true. And they really had no idea what this might be, only that it was important.  
  
“We’ll take it with us and investigate it more later,” he said firmly, casting one more Disarming Hex as the wards on the parchment tried to spring back to life and turn the paper to cut him. “It might be that we’ll understand it better with distance.”  
  
Harry didn’t answer him, and Draco looked up, ready to repeat what he had said if he had to, although it annoyed him. Then he realized Harry was focused on something at the back of the room, looking to a casual eye as if he were inspecting a pile of boxes—but only to a casual eye.  
  
“You see something?” Draco made his own tone low and gentle. He turned to the side as if the bedsheets had taken him and ran his fingers through the cloth.  
  
“Against the wall,” Harry said, and drew his wand.  
  
Draco gave a quick glance in that direction, and could see nothing. That made his breath speed up and his heartbeat seem to glow in his face. He turned his back and wandered towards the front of the room, whistling under his breath.  
  
Behind him came a swift motion, a surge of magic that made his hair seem to tingle down to the roots, and a curse. Draco leaped in the air and came down facing Harry, his wand out and his arm straight and ready for action. Harry was shaking his head in disgust as he stepped back from the wall.  
  
“You didn’t catch it?” Draco asked.  
  
“I caught it, all right,” Harry said, voice still thick with distaste. He moved his hand to the side and the shape came swishing into Draco’s sight. Draco wrinkled his nose and stepped back, too.  
  
It appeared to be a rat, but a rat that had been squashed some time ago and then set back on its feet. It was a thin strip of bloody fur and flesh, and the smell that rose from it made Draco open his mouth to tell Harry to put it back. They didn’t have to do anything with a corpse, and it was just more evidence of how unbalanced Ernhardt was—as if they needed more.  
  
Then the rat’s head twitched and swung around on the short, thick neck to look at them.  
  
Draco  _did_ think he was going to be sick then; his mouth was filled with thin water and yellow bile. The rat’s mouth opened, a thin, jagged sideways slash in the long muzzle, and it hissed feebly at them. Draco noticed Harry cock his head, and his eyes widen.  
  
“Can you understand what it’s saying?” he demanded over the rat’s hissing. “Is it Parseltongue?”  
  
“Not  _exactly_ ,” Harry said, and cast another spell that suspended the ugly thing above them and a little off to the side, so that it stood less chance of catching them with teeth or tail or claws. “It resembles some of the words in Parseltongue, but it’s like trying to understand someone with a bad accent and broken teeth.”  
  
Draco eyed the rat’s teeth. They were indeed broken, but he thought they could be dangerous for all of that. He told Harry so.  
  
“Oh, I know,” Harry said absently, eyes still fixed on the rat as it swung and clawed and shook, trembling to get closer. “But I don’t think—I don’t think this is Ernhardt’s, if that makes any sense. You remember how he could possess twisted with different gifts, the way he did in the Alto case?”  
  
“The way he’s doing now,” Draco added pointedly, remembering Macgeorge.  
  
“Yes, all right,” Harry said, with an impatient wave of his hand. “But I think this rat belongs to another twisted. The way it speaks—it could do it if it’s commanded, but I can  _feel_ the magic that’s making it do so, and it doesn’t feel like Ernhardt’s.”  
  
“Is it necromancy?” Draco asked quietly. He and Harry had both watched Macgeorge use the bodies of small animals to build bone-creatures and attack her enemies.  
  
Harry paused, and then made the hissing sound again. The rat twisted and hissed at him once more. If it was intelligible, Harry didn’t  _look_ as if it was; he looked sick instead, his eyes shutting and then opening again.  
  
“It could be,” he said. “It very well could be. We don’t know how well he can use her gift, but since the gift is part of her body and not her mind or spirit—”   
  
“He can probably use it at least as well as the gifts of those twisted he sent against Alto,” Draco summed up. “Maybe better, since he’s spent more time in Macgeorge’s body and he’s more likely to know what it’s capable of.”  
  
Harry nodded. “All right. Then we need to—”  
  
The rat exploded, showering them both in chunks of fur and rotten meat. Draco danced backwards, swiping at his face, crying out before he could stop himself. The stuff was thick, and foul, and red in ways that he hated.  
  
Harry cast a spell that flung the chunks of the rat off him, and Draco stopped his dance and nodded a stiff thanks. His cheeks burned with embarrassment, but the one good thing about that was that the mess probably concealed whatever he looked like from view.  
  
“I don’t blame you for reacting that way,” Harry said. “I would have if more of it had landed on me.” He turned to scan the room again, then shook his head, but kept his back neatly turned, quietly giving Draco time to recover himself. “I don’t see any other message that Ernhardt could have left for us. Let’s go back to the office and see what sense we can make of that map.”  
  
“Harry,” Draco called after him as he turned towards the door.  
  
“What?” Harry glanced over his shoulder. His face had gone still.  
  
“You said you could almost understand what the rat was saying,” Draco said. “A bad accent and broken teeth don’t keep  _all_ the sense out. What was it saying?”  
  
Harry sighed and closed his eyes. “Welcome, friends, to the place where your death begins,” he whispered, and then left, his Auror robes swishing so hard around him that Draco missed anything else he added.  
  
Draco lingered in the room for a moment, shaking his head. They knew Ernhardt would be a tough enemy to beat, and that he hated them personally. That made the words that came out of the rat’s mouth less of a surprise.  
  
But he still couldn’t help the chill that ran down his back, similar to what he had felt when the exploding rat touched his face. The chill was anger, resignation, and horror at what they had to face up to, the enemy that their own failure had helped in part to create.  
  
 _If we created him, we have to defeat him. As simple as that._  
  
The facts that wouldn’t change gave Draco the courage to glance scornfully at the shadows lingering in the room, the shadows that would have concealed other surprises and traps, doubtless, if Ernhardt had had the time to set them up, and then walk steadily away. He was a survivor, and he was going to survive what Ernhardt tried to do to him as well as what the Ministry and his family tried.  
  
*  
  
Harry stared uneasily up and down the street outside Ernhardt’s house. There was nothing much there, only the blank faces of houses and the shut doors and shuttered windows that were usual for this part of the day; almost everyone who lived in this quarter of wizarding London worked for the Ministry, and would be there. Likely it was only the rat and the strange words it had hissed that left him jumpy.  
  
But he still felt as though something was scratching up his spine, and he turned with relief and wonder when Draco emerged from the house.  
  
“Let’s go,” he said. “I think Ernhardt left other wards around the house, ones that were supposed to make people who spent time here feel as if something was watching them.”  
  
Draco smiled and opened his mouth. Harry waited eagerly for the explanation. Of course, Draco was an expert on much Dark magic that still eluded Harry, and his family had had all sorts of similar wards around their Manor. Draco would probably explain exactly how the wards worked, and in turn explain away all of Harry’s fear.  
  
Then the Dementor arrived.  
  
Harry saw the trailing edge of its cloak whipping around the corner, and turned to face it, aiming his wand with a hand that shook. The Dementor was upon them already, its hood back so that he could see the stretched, gaping jaws and the horrid eyes. Those eyes were fixed on Draco, who had fallen one step back and then stood still, his own eyes enormous.  
  
Harry shook off his paralysis as that sight sank in. No, fuck it, he was  _not_ going to lose Draco. He would not, he was not, with all that he was he  _would_ not.   
  
And into his mind came the memory of the times that he and Draco had made love, the times that Draco had written him letters and cornered him and forced Harry to admit that he fancied him, the cases they had finished together and the twisted they had killed. Not the most romantic of memories, but the ones that had bonded them, and memories that had become pleasure in the recounting, in the remembering, the way that their lives had entwined and become one.  
  
More than enough happy memories to summon a Patronus.  
  
“ _EXPECTO PATRONUM_!” he bellowed, and the street was suddenly full of glittering, shining silver stag.  
  
It didn’t pause and wait for orders the way it did so often; it leaped into the air, and came down between Draco and the Dementor like a rearing horse, the forelegs scraping at the Dementor's robe, the antlers bent as it huffed out a challenge. The Dementor paused at the sight of it, but then tried to flow past. It was so intent on Draco, never glancing at Harry at all, that he knew Draco’s parents must have done as they said, and contracted someone who could make bargains with Dementors.  
  
The Patronus charged. For a moment, Harry thought he saw the Dementor’s eyes widen even further as the antlers tore its ghostly form to shreds, passing through its belly and stabbing into its cloak. It made a single sharp movement, and Harry heard a high, whistling sound like a scream from a great distance.  
  
And then it was gone, torn free, ended, and Draco was sinking down on his knees on the cobblestones with his hands over his face. Harry huddled down beside him and checked his throat and cheek with a gentle touch, although he knew that Draco must still have his soul or he wouldn’t be moving.  
  
A sound near his head startled him. Harry blinked up at the silver stag, which perked its ears forwards and tilted its heavy crown of antlers as though asking him what he wanted to do.  
  
“I’m going to need you to keep watch,” Harry said quietly. “There might be more than one Dementor where that came from. Keep watch up and down the street until we Apparate. Then you can go away.”  
  
The stag huffed out a breath in what might have been impatience but was certainly obedience, and turned away. Harry helped Draco stand gently, raking back his hair from his ears and murmuring, “Are you all right?”  
  
Draco swallowed. “Yes,” he said in a low voice. “I always forget how much I hate the bloody things until I see them again.”  
  
“I know,” Harry said fervently. He hadn’t had his usual reaction to the sight of a Dementor this time, probably because it was so focused on Draco, but he could remember the times he had with painful clarity. “Come on. If they’re going to chase you, we should at least make them work for it.”  
  
Draco leaned on his shoulder as Harry led him down the street towards the Apparition point. Behind him, he could hear the faint  _clack_ of the stag’s cloven feet on the cobbles as it trotted back and forth, peering into shadows and blowing a challenge when one of them moved. It was only a shutter swinging open, though, someone staring into the street, too late now—or too early, if they had wanted to witness Draco dying.  
  
Draco didn’t say anything for a long time. Harry thought he was in shock until he whispered, “They did it. I never thought they would—but they really did. They  _did_ decide that I was worth more dead than alive.”  
  
Harry stroked his shoulder, and could think of nothing to say except, “Hush.”  
  
Draco shuddered, and did.


	3. Reporting In

“Is  _anyone_ interested in what we do now?”  
  
Harry only shook his head as he followed Draco down the corridor towards the Socrates office. “You know that they’re only letting us run on the leash that they are because they think it’s the best they can do without actually  _acknowledging_ Ernhardt’s existence as Blue Eyes,” he said. “They don’t want to change their definitions. With reason. Because if you start thinking of all the real people who have died because of the definition of the twisted, then they have to start being  _moral_.”  
  
“Not  _this_ again.” Draco turned around in the middle of the corridor and shook his head at Harry. He’d recovered remarkably well from nearly having his soul devoured by a Dementor, Harry thought, and then told himself not to be stupid. Of course he was in denial, and would continue that until he could deal with it, probably. “Listen, Harry. I acknowledge that you were right about the definitions being wrong and unsuitable in lots of cases. But we have to catch the twisted we’re hunting, not theorize about the definitions being wrong.”  
  
Harry raised his hands, and said nothing. Draco was right. They had enough enemies to focus on without arguing with each other.  
  
They stepped into the office with tightened shoulders at the same time, Harry noticed, and looked at Rudie’s and Elder’s desks together. But no one sat there, and Draco relaxed and moved towards his own while calling over his shoulder, “We should look again at the files on the old twisted and see if there was anyone else who had necromancy. It might tell us what they did to hunt them, anyway.”  
  
Harry opened his mouth to comment that Draco ought to have enough knowledge on necromancy without that, given that he had hunted a dangerous one right before he was assigned to the Socrates Corps.  
  
“You’ve worked alone long enough.”  
  
Harry whipped around with his wand raised before he thought about it. Thomasina Warren stood behind him, another Socrates Auror with red hair and brown eyes. Behind her was Simone Jenkins, her partner. She had her wand out, but aimed somewhere between Harry and Draco, in a stance that Harry understood was meant to imply no threat.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Draco said, once again the polished politician in the face of mere human opposition. Harry was happy enough to fade into the background and leave him to get on with challenging the other two Aurors’ preconceptions. “The Ministry gave us this case. We’re doing our job.”  
  
Warren and Jenkins exchanged glances. They were the pair of Aurors in the Socrates Corps who had worked together the longest, Harry knew, although he didn’t  _know_ them very well. From the moment he and Draco had come into the Corps, they had isolated themselves and mostly worked on their own.  
  
He understood now that part of that had been a deliberate tactic—and not theirs. Ernhardt, as Head Auror and someone who wanted to destroy Harry before Harry found out a way to destroy him, had arranged matters so that rumors of Harry’s danger and incompetence would spread, and had enlisted Draco as his partner because he thought their old rivalry would drag the partnership down.  
  
And even after he and Draco had started getting along better, well, the Aurors in Socrates worked together less than the Aurors in any other Corps. That had been almost comfortable, for Harry. He could withdraw into a small world that consisted of him and Draco and enjoy their blossoming love affair, and he could convince himself that the mistakes he made mattered to fewer people. Well, of course, they  _all_ mattered to Draco, but there was a difference between one loving, critical pair of eyes as an audience, and a lot of them.  
  
“I know,” Warren said. “But for the first time in a long time, I think the Ministry hasn’t the slightest clue what it’s doing.”  
  
Harry blinked. He had never talked much with Warren, but he had known she trusted the Ministry more than he did. Then again,  _everyone_ trusted the Ministry more than he did.  
  
“The Ministry’s definitions of twisted need some work,” Jenkins said, folding her arms and leaning back almost primly against the wall. Warren nudged the door shut and cast some complicated charms that made Harry’s ears water. He reckoned they would do at least that, and probably worse, to anyone trying to eavesdrop. “And so does their definition of a Corps, and partnership. We want to help you.”  
  
“You don’t have any extra responsibility towards Macgeorge,” Harry said, because he suspected he knew where this was coming from. “We do. We were the ones who involved her in our case, and we were the ones who should have known from the outset what it was doing to her.” He saw the way Draco frowned at him, but ignored that for now. If he could convince Warren and Jenkins to back off, then that was one less pair of people they had to watch out for.  
  
“We’re all  _Aurors_ ,” Warren said. “And we’re the only ones who are entrusted with this dangerous work. This necessary work, I would have said, but knowing who our Head Auror was makes me question it.”  
  
Jenkins rolled her eyes. She had long blond hair and was a lot less frightening when she didn’t smile. “You’ve said that before, Thomasina, and had it taken the wrong way. They’ll be thinking that you approve of what Ernhardt did as Head Auror next. Explain to them what you meant.”  
  
Warren glared at her for a moment, and Harry wondered if they were about to witness the outbreak of a duel. He didn’t know enough about them to know who would win, though in a duel between Rudie and Elder he would have bet on Rudie.  
  
 _And in a duel between me and Draco?_  
  
The thought was painful, and Harry put it aside. But he knew, with the certainty that came from gauging their magical strength and participating in numerous duels as well as different kinds of battles, that he was the magically stronger and the quicker. That might not matter if Draco got off a Dark spell Harry didn’t know first, and it certainly wouldn’t matter, given that Harry didn’t want to hurt Draco in any way at all. But he was stronger.  
  
Warren? Perhaps, with the strange spells she seemed to know. But she subsided after a long moment of glaring at Jenkins, and turned around again.  
  
“I meant,” she muttered, with a flicker of a glance at Jenkins that didn’t appear to sting, “that the Head Auror didn’t fit the profile of a typical twisted as we were taught to look for them, and neither do a lot of the other twisted we’ve hunted.”  
  
“I could have told you that  _ages_ ago,” Harry said, unable to help himself. He fell silent at a glance from Draco, and fell back with a nod when Draco gestured to him. Obviously Draco wanted to handle this part of the conversation.  
  
Draco looked fixedly at Warren and Jenkins for a moment, and then asked simply, “What help could you give us? We work best alone, and that remains true now.”  
  
“You  _don’t_ work best alone,” Warren said. “Not as quickly, not as efficiently. And while you kill your man, or your woman, you bring yourselves into danger each time you do it. Have someone else with you, or a pair of partners, and you can investigate further and stand less chance of being wounded in a confrontation.”  
  
“Yes, perhaps,” Draco said. Harry was pleased that he had at least realized this much was true, and it would be silly to deny it. “But the rest of the Ministry blames us for Macgeorge and Ernhardt, or is waiting to see what happens in regards to how blame falls. I don’t want to deal with your prejudices on top of that. You might blame me and Harry for what we did, or didn’t do. You might not blame us now, but will as you know more about it. Allies that we can’t trust are worse than none at all.”  
  
This time, Jenkins was the one who stepped forwards, and she did it fast enough that Harry’s wand was up before he finished seeing her motion. Jenkins stopped and looked at him. “Do you trust me enough to speak to me without a guard dog, Auror Malfoy?” she asked.  
  
“Not right now,” Draco said, and Harry felt the faint pressure of a warm hand against the middle of his back. He knew that Draco stood behind him, now as always, and resisted the temptation to lean back against Draco, to almost collapse against him. That might ruin the united front they were presenting, with Draco as brain and Harry as muscle.  
  
*  
  
 _Harry is doing well._  
  
Of course, Harry always did when someone gave him a chance. Draco thought that Harry might have even tried to understand Blue Eyes and give him some room as a twisted, provided that he didn’t hurt anyone else. That would have been like someone of Harry’s sickening, sterling moral character. He had argued with Draco before about whether they  _really_ needed to kill twisted, or whether it would be enough to give them some sort of warning and protection and shut them away from ordinary people.  
  
But Blue Eyes had been prejudiced against him instead, and had assigned Draco to contain him, and forged his own doom that way.  
  
Draco shook his thoughts away when he realized how intently Warren was watching him. She would sense weakness, he thought, faster than her partner, although it was Jenkins who had taken the point position right now. He waited in silence, raising an eyebrow as moments passed and neither one of them spoke.  
  
“Very well,” Jenkins said, with a sudden motion of her hands. “Then we’ll talk to you about our plans and give you our suspicions about where Ernhardt might have gone without asking you to trust us, right now.”  
  
Draco snorted. “You have some suspicions?”  
  
“Yes,” Warren said, and Draco marked the way that Jenkins stepped back and Harry’s wand on her relaxed a little. They had their own rhythms, then, these partners. “We came here because of cases that we worked in the past, the way that you worked the Sussex Necromancer case, and  _you_ worked the Gina Hendricks case.” She nodded to Harry. “And the one that I worked on involved Ernhardt.”  
  
Draco blinked. “I’m surprised they let him have the post of Head Auror, if he was involved as a suspect in a case.”  
  
Warren shook her head. “Not a suspect, so much as a—complicating factor. And this happened after he was already Head Auror.”  
  
“All right,” Draco said. He tried to keep the gratitude out of his face and voice, because it would only encourage them. Besides, he didn’t know if gratitude was the right emotion to feel yet. It was true that he would never have known anything about this if Warren and Jenkins hadn’t approached them, and wouldn’t have thought to ask, but  _still._ “So what was it?”  
  
Jenkins touched Warren’s shoulder. Warren shrugged once, as though asking silently what else her partner would have her do, and plunged ahead into the tale.  
  
“Ernhardt was related to the twisted I hunted then, though of course I didn’t know that he was a twisted, or that the term or the classification had been made,” Warren said flatly. “He was in a more classic mode, like Larkin, the first case you handled, instead of some of the other unusual ones. Wanted to be a Dark Lord, had apparently driven himself mad by studying Dark Arts. But his companions were viruses.”  
  
Draco blinked. “Excuse me?” He knew something about the term, because a little bit of the knowledge had migrated into the wizarding world with the last Spotted Plague outbreak, but he didn’t know much of what viruses were or did. From the way Harry stirred beside him, he did, and the expression on his face was sharp.  
  
Warren nodded. “His flaw wasn’t disease, which fooled us all at first, and allowed him to keep on working for a while. Instead, his flaw was cracking someone’s bones open with a touch, and his companions were diseases that attacked those who hunted him. Viruses of all kinds. My partner suffered from the worst case of influenza I’ve ever seen, for example.”  
  
Draco shivered in spite of himself. He was just as glad that he hadn’t been around to face this twisted of Warren’s. He had no special fear of disease, but watching Harry sicken, perhaps to death, was not something he wanted to envision. Better to face a twisted who would honestly try to control your brain or make you forget her presence.  
  
“We took him down,” said Warren. Her eyes were distant, her hand closed in front of her, in the narrow tunnel that would ordinarily hold a wand. Draco was just as glad that she wasn’t holding one now, given the expression on her face and the one on Harry’s. “It cost us a lot, but we did.  
  
“Before that, though, we talked to Ernhardt, as someone who had known our twisted in his youth and might know a little more about his flaw. Ernhardt refused to tell us much. He  _hinted_ , instead. He smiled and shook his head and made it seem as though the questions we asked were the real reason for his refusing to answer outright, instead of his own stubbornness.”  
  
“And you suspected nothing wrong with that?” Harry asked, his voice as low as Warren’s. “You didn’t think it strange that the Head Auror would withhold vital information like that?”  
  
“Did you think it strange that the Head Auror should wish to persecute one of his Aurors the way he went after you?” Warren countered. “No. It’s only in hindsight that one can see how wrong the situation was.”  
  
Harry subsided, and nodded. Draco frowned a little. He was used to being the only one who could subdue Harry.  
  
“The point of this is,” Warren said, “is that he did throw out one name, one place, that he thought our twisted might have gone to hide. The name of a house that they’d shared when they were young men trying to make their way in the world and the Ministry. Ernhardt succeeded, his cousin didn’t, but the house was still in both their names. Cuthbert’s Corner, it was called. It’s where we eventually faced and brought down his cousin.”  
  
Harry hissed air out. Draco nodded despite himself, but did say, “And you think that he’d be careless enough to go back there when he has to know that he told you about the place?”  
  
“I doubt he will be thinking of me,” Warren said coldly. “Since you are accustomed to working on your own, and he might reasonably think that you wouldn’t join up with other Aurors even for this. Or that other Aurors would blame you for too much to want to help you in the first place.” Her head turned, eyes focusing on Harry.  
  
Harry was the one who nodded this time, and said to Draco, “It’s more than we had before. A place to start.”  
  
“If we accept the price for their aid,” Draco said. “Note that dear Thomasina here has only given us a name, not a location. She wants to be with us when we go there to search for Ernhardt.” It seemed easier to call him by that name, instead of the blended concert of names he and Harry had used before, in front of other people.  
  
“No,” said Jenkins, with a lazy smile that made Draco nearly snap his tendons restraining his hands from reaching for his wand. “ _We_ want to go. I didn’t work that case with Thomasina, but I bloody well plan to be there for this one.”  
  
Draco held her eyes. She didn’t look away. Draco sighed. He didn’t know if she understood the extent of the danger, but he had the feeling it wouldn’t mean much to her even if she did. She would still insist on being there, and with her would come Warren.  
  
 _Someone else to worry that Ernhardt might possess._  
  
“You don’t understand what’s happened to Macgeorge since Ernhardt took her body over,” Harry said. His voice was reasonable, measured, to Draco’s surprise. Maybe it shouldn’t have been, since it made Warren and Jenkins both turn to him with folded arms and frowns. “It  _blended_ their flaws. He can possess other people, now, but he can also use the necromancy that she had. We’ve found evidence since then that argues for the necromancy, at least. And there’s no reason to think he would lose his own flaw. Imagine what would happen if he jumped into one of your bodies and turned you against us.”  
  
Warren and Jenkins glanced at each other again. Jenkins raised one hand, palm up, towards Warren. Warren shrugged with one shoulder.  
  
“That can’t happen with me,” Jenkins said calmly.  
  
Harry snorted. “I thought it couldn’t happen with me, either, since I can resist the Imperius Curse, but it did. It was only luck and extreme pain that let me fight him off, not any skill.”  
  
“I mean, it  _can’t_ ,” Jenkins said, and shifted her weight significantly.  
  
“Your flaw,” Draco said.  
  
Jenkins eyed him and nodded. “Like yours, it’s not one that’s as visible or impressive—not like Potter’s visions, not like Nicolette’s necromancy. But I have absolute control and command of my own mind. My only dreams are lucid ones. No one can reach me with Legilimency. Spells like the Imperius Curse don’t work on me, either. It’s definitely magical. It had it tested by people who don’t care about the distinction between Light and Dark magic and would have broken me down if they could. They couldn’t, and that’s an end of it. Even someone who had a—variation—of Ernhardt’s flaw couldn’t break into my thoughts. It’s still a risk to go up against someone as strong as he is, I know, but I don’t think you need to worry about him taking me.”  
  
“That sounds impressive enough to  _me_ ,” Harry said, and gave Jenkins a little salute that made Draco twitch. “Well.” He turned to Draco, expectantly, and Draco lifted his head a little when he realized that the others were looking, too. “Do we want to risk it?”  
  
“We don’t have a choice,” Draco said, glancing at Warren. “We won’t have the information unless we risk it.”  
  
Warren’s mouth tightened when she sneered, in a way that Draco frankly thought made her look unattractive. Not that she would care about his opinions, but he noted them to himself to share with Harry later. “We would give it to you if we thought there was no chance we could stand up to  _him_ ,” she said. “Give it to you, and let you act on your own. But with Simone’s gift and the difficulty of this case, we’re more confident.”  
  
“No one can be,” Draco said, and met her stare.  
  
“Then you can’t be, either, especially since you confronted him and failed once before,” Warren snapped back. “We’re not denying that this is hard, Auror Malfoy, and that we should have helped you before now and failed to do so. But this is the last chance, maybe, for us to stop the most powerful twisted any of us have seen before he goes on some kind of rampage. We’re willing to give you our help. Fucking  _accept_ it, would you?”  
  
Harry’s mouth twitched. Draco kept himself from making a motion of irritation, because of what would happen—the weakness he would reveal to Warren and Jenkins—if he did.  
  
“Very well,” he said. “You can come with us. But remember that we might have to kill you, or at least harm you, if there’s a chance that you could harm us.”  
  
“The same to you,” Jenkins said, with a shimmery little toss of her hair that Draco thought belonged on a more feminine woman.  
  
“Very well,” said Warren, after a long investigation of Draco’s eyes that seemed to convince her he was telling the truth. “Cuthbert’s Corner is in Cornwall, the extreme south, very near to the place where Arthur was supposedly conceived. I’m sure that’s one reason Ernhardt and his cousin went there to study and told themselves they were destined for greatness.”  
  
“A desert of a kind,” Harry said.  
  
Draco thought of how close it was to the ocean, and nodded. An ocean wasn’t a desert, but it wasn’t rich land, either, and in the warped mind of a twisted, that might work out to the same thing.  
  
“When we’ve brought him down,” Jenkins said, “then we’ll have to talk more about the definitions of twisted and the work that the Ministry has had us doing. There is  _no_ reason that we should continue blindly killing people when we might be able to save them.”  
  
Draco rolled his eyes. He had two martyrs on his hands now—perhaps three, if Warren agreed with her partner. “But you don’t have any problem with hunting down Ernhardt in the meantime?” he had to ask.  
  
Jenkins looked at him. “Given what he’s done? No. But for some of these twisted, their evil lies more in their potential than in what they’ve done. And if a flaw is enough to get someone executed, then at least three of us here have a lot to answer for.” She touched her chest above her heart, her fingers folded in.  
  
“Not four for lack of trying,” said Warren.  
  
Jenkins nodded to her, and turned back to Harry and Draco. “Ernhardt mentioned something of the defenses around the house to Thomasina, too. We need to gather materials and spellbooks. Shall we meet back here in an hour’s time?”  
  
“Three hours,” Warren said. “It’ll take at least that long.”  
  
Jenkins sent her hair sliding down her neck with her long, gracious nod. “Very well. Three?”  
  
Draco nodded back, and the pair left. Harry stirred and slid his wand slowly back into its holder, shaking his head. “Do you think this is going to work?” he asked.  
  
Draco made sure the door was shut and the wards engaged before he answered. “It looks like we’re committed to finding out, doesn’t it?” 


	4. Cuthbert's Corner

“There it is.”  
  
Draco was glad to hear the words, especially emerging as they just had at the end of a dizzy series of Apparitions. He shook his head to get his breath back, and studied the countryside in front of him.  
  
They stood on the edge of a broken, tumbledown cliff, which slanted away rapidly into what Draco would call a valley only if he read in the dictionary that valleys could lie on their sides and, sometimes, stand on end. To the left and right of them, wings of rock stretched, in a pale yellow-brown that reminded Draco of some of the older walls in the Manor. And beyond that piled more rocks, black and yellow and sea-stained brown and grey, mounds and curves and tables, with the sea splashing between them.  
  
The roar of the waves tumbling regularly in obscured the first words Draco tried to speak. He grimaced and shook his head, raising his voice. “Where does the house lie from here?”  
  
Warren, who had been standing in front of him and staring down into the water as though it could tell them the location of Ernhardt all by itself, started and turned to him. “I told you,” she said, swaying her arm ahead of herself. “It’s right there.”  
  
Harry shifted his weight. Draco glanced at him, and was glad to see that he wasn’t the only one who blinked.  
  
“We can’t see it,” Harry said. “Does it have Expectation Wards built on it? Can people only see it if they’re expecting it to appear in a particular place, or if they’ve been here before?” he clarified, when Warren folded her arms.  
  
 _Fancy not knowing what Expectation Wards are,_ Draco thought, but it was true that they were still a somewhat experimental branch of magic, and that Warren, for all her expertise in obscure spells, couldn’t know  _everything_.  
  
“It’s  _there_ ,” Jenkins said. She was perched on a rock next to them, leaning forwards like she was poising for the sculpture of an Auror on the hunt, and her arm pointed straight ahead with more emphasis than Warren’s.  
  
This time Draco forced his eyes to follow that path and only that path, and although they watered and sent tears plummeting down to join the sea below, he found what he was looking for in a minute. The house was built of the same stone as the cliffs, and low and rounded enough to blend in with them. No doubt that had been an advantage for Ernhardt and also his cousin, the mad twisted.  
  
 _Not that we can use that description by itself now, since it could so easily mean either of them._  
  
The front door of the house was a great arch, filled with what looked like regularly-placed bricks with not a seam between them. Draco refrained from asking how they would enter the house if that was the case. They had to cross the distance between them and the house first, and that distance was filled with the wildly swirling water and the breaks in the stone that looked too wide to simply leap across.  
  
“It has defenses,” Warren said, scanning the rock in front of her. “Or did. It wouldn’t be wise to go prancing up to it.”  
  
“You don’t say,” Draco remarked politely.  
  
Warren turned to face him looking as though she was in control of every muscle of her body, and as though that wasn’t a good thing. “I’ve brought you here, Malfoy, and I’ve sworn to try to help you,” she said. “Because I think it’s more important to end the threat that Ernhardt presents than to maintain stupid rivalries about who’s solved the most cases. But you can turn on me if you like. You’ll find me ready to defend myself.”  
  
“And not just her,” Jenkins said. From the sound of things, she had risen to her feet, but Draco could imagine the threatening posture she would take all too easily.  
  
“This is stupid,” Harry said.  
  
Draco blinked at him. They had come this far and he was willing to give up on the hunt for Ernhardt without even searching the house?  
  
But Harry was glaring at Warren and Jenkins, he saw, and relaxed a little. “This is stupid,” Harry repeated. “You make an obvious comment, Draco makes an obvious comment, and you react as though he’s insulted your children.” Warren took a step to the side, as though to clarify that she didn’t have children, but Harry was plunging ahead and paid no attention. “If you want us to trust you and work with you, then you’re going to have to extend the same courtesy to us, whether or not you want to.”  
  
Jenkins said something that Draco couldn’t hear the whole of, but it sounded as though it involved the word “Peregrine.” Perhaps the name of a twisted they’d hunted, Draco thought, or a place.  
  
Warren shook her arms out, from elbows to wrists, and nodded. “Fine,” she said, and moved off towards the house, taking a route that would lead her onto the more solid part of the cliffs. Jenkins followed without looking back at them. Harry took Draco’s arm and stroked it quickly for a minute, asking with a glance if he was all right.  
  
“Fine,” Draco said. “We should move while it’s still daylight.”  
  
Harry nodded, and fell in behind him. Draco listened to the solid sound of his steps over stone, and permitted himself a private smile.  
  
He should have hated the thought that Warren and Jenkins would respect Harry enough to step away from an incipient fight when they didn’t respect Draco enough to do the same. But at the moment, all he could think was that it was good to be Harry Potter’s partner.  
  
*  
  
Harry didn’t trust anything about the landscape around Cuthbert’s Corner. It was too bright, too open, and the house, once you saw it, simply sat there in the free air without the protective cocoon of wards that he would have expected around a twisted’s lair. Not that any of the ones they had hunted had  _lairs,_ really, unless you counted Alto making her home in St. Mungo’s, or the house that Nancy Morningstar had inhabited when she was still Katherine Jourdemayne.   
  
 _The Gina Hendricks case…_  
  
Harry shook his head. He couldn’t think too much about that case, or the taste of bile and steel would fill his mouth, and the sight of what Lionel’s body had looked like when he died would take over his mind. He no longer mourned Lionel with the intense and single-minded passion that he had before he and Draco became lovers, but they needed to be concentrating on the possible defenses of the house in front of them.  
  
None of which had appeared yet, and their little hunting group had covered more than half the distance to it.  
  
Harry closed his eyes, falling deeply into himself. Draco was the one who was really good at sensing Dark magic, thanks to his flaw, but Harry wasn’t bad himself. And since his specialty was defensive magic, he was more likely than Draco to sense wards; Draco picked up more on offensive spells, especially curses and the flaws that twisted used.  
  
He jerked to a halt a moment later and shouted, “Stop walking! Close your eyes!”  
  
He didn’t know if they had obeyed him. He didn’t dare open his eyes to check. He could hear his own breathing rushing towards panic mode, and threw his own mind against the traces that were tugging him there, telling himself to  _stop that._ Sometimes he could exert control over his thoughts even though he was still mostly pants at Occlumency, and this was one of those times.  
  
Draco’s voice came from his right, calmer than Harry had thought it would be. “They’re dark dogs, aren’t they?”  
  
“They are,” Harry said, and kept himself from turning his head towards Draco’s voice, because that would increase the temptation to open his eyes. “If you don’t look at them, they’re harmless. But we have to be careful not to walk into them.”  
  
“Rather difficult, when we can’t open our eyes,” Jenkins said in a dry voice from somewhere behind his left shoulder. “Can you explain the nature of this curse to us?”  
  
Harry sighed. “The dark dogs are illusions summoned by a certain kind of defensive ward. The sight of them enters your eyes if you look at them, and burns itself into them. No matter what you look at again, you’ll never see anything but dog-shapes imprinting themselves over and over on your field of vision.”  
  
There was a small, appalled silence, and then Harry heard the soundless growl from off to the side. He stood still. Hard to walk into the dogs when you weren’t moving.  
  
“And what happens if you touch them?” Warren asked.  
  
“Then they swallow you,” Draco said, his voice distant and muffled. Harry hoped he hadn’t tried to move. “Whatever touches them vanishes. I’ve seen people reach out to pat their heads and pull back a stump instead of a hand. Painless and bloodless, if you like that sort of thing. I don’t.”  
  
More silence, and Harry reminded himself again that dark dogs didn’t move of their own free will. They hardly had to, when they could wait for someone to look at them or walk into them. The growling continued, though, up and down the scale, and impossible to stop hearing once you started.  
  
“I don’t think they could affect me,” Jenkins said. “They enter in at the eye, and affect the mind? My mind is locked and warded against such intrusions, as I think I told you.”  
  
“We don’t know that for certain,” Draco snapped. Harry reached out towards him, wanting to touch his hand, and then stopped. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he felt the vague coldness of a dark dog in the air between them. “It could be a mental curse, or classified that way, but it could also be a purely visual effect. Most people don’t study the curse enough to know for sure.”  
  
“Someone said,” Jenkins murmured. “If I fail, then you’ve at least gained a piece of knowledge which you can apply to other occasions.”  
  
“Don’t, Simone,” Warren said, in a tone that Harry imagined she’d used in arguments before this. “You’re worth too much to me.”  
  
Jenkins said nothing for long seconds, then let out a long, irritated sigh. “If you can’t look at them or touch them, then how do you get rid of dark dogs?”  
  
Harry felt Draco’s eyes on him, although neither of them would be looking at the moment. They had worked together long enough by now that some things were instinctive.  
  
“The counterspell is Dark,” Harry said, because he knew what Draco was thinking: they would take word of the cure better when coming from someone like him, Harry Potter, supposed champion of all that was good and right. “And it’s draining. I can use it, but you may have to protect me for the next few hours.”  
  
“Use it,” Warren said. “We’re losing more standing here, vulnerable to Ernhardt if he comes by, than we are if you’re not at full strength.”  
  
“Aren’t you a charmer?” Harry thought he heard Draco mutter, but if he had, then Warren chose to take no notice of it.  
  
Harry nodded, and reached out to his magic. It rose to his will the way it always did, whether the spell was Dark or Light. He would have to conceal that from Warren and Jenkins, he thought, because there was a common perception that only Dark wizards had that much ease with the Dark Arts.  
  
For now, Harry would let them keep their innocent perceptions, but he knew that power had a lot more to do with it than a certain amount of magic practiced did.  
  
He spoke the spell aloud; it was surer that way, and there was no time for nonverbal fanciness. He heard the growl building around him as he spoke, but ignored it. The dark dogs still wouldn’t move and interfere. They were part of a ward, not creatures with a will and bodies of their own.  
  
The growl became a howl as he reached the end of the spell, the last syllables of the incantation seeming to leap from him like sparks and earth themselves in the stone. But it didn’t distract Harry from the magic, and he finished with a clench of his hand on his wand, pouring himself into the spell to make sure it worked.  
  
The howl sounded from a dozen throats at once, and Harry winced, struggling to keep his eyes shut. He wanted to look instinctively at the awfulness of the sound, because it might tell him how many enemies were coming towards them.  
  
 _They’re not coming. You banished them. Hold tight to that._  
  
The howling shivered into silence, and the growls were gone, too, as well as the intangible feeling of something cold and still watching them. Harry took a deep breath, and, because  _someone_ had to be the first to do so, opened his eyes.  
  
The stone around them was once again its natural colors in the sunlight, free of dark dogs. Harry turned to Draco, whose eyes he had never been so glad to see, and nodded. “They’re gone,” he said aloud, to free Warren and Jenkins.  
  
By the time the other two Aurors began to move again, the exhaustion was already hitting Harry. He conjured a crutch to lean on, and then Draco stepped up beside him and gave him a single, extremely even look. Harry stared back.  
  
“Take my strength,” Draco whispered, and held out his hand.  
  
Harry hesitated. Yes, there was a spell Draco could use that would contribute some strength to Harry, too, and if they did it right—as Draco would do it, of course—then it wouldn’t lead to them both being utterly exhausted, the way it otherwise could. But he didn’t know if it was worth the cost. This way, they only had one person who was tired, while Draco was still at full strength. If Draco and he were both half-tired instead, then they might not react quickly enough when another of Ernhardt’s defenses popped up in front of them.  
  
“Take it,” Jenkins said. She was walking on when Harry looked up at her, without glancing back. “If he wants to offer it, then he won’t stop thinking about it until you  _do_ take it. And we need you both alert more than we need you both at full strength.”  
  
Warren paused only to nod at them before following her partner.  
  
Less complaining about the Dark spell than Harry had thought he would hear, though of course it was possible that they were waiting until later to scold them. Or maybe they didn’t want to break up their own focus by talking about it now.  
  
Draco’s hand poked his hand.  
  
Harry nodded, and linked his fingers with Draco’s, and listened as Draco whispered the incantation. The strength flowed into him and made him sway, but in a good way, as a little of the exhaustion drowned under it the way thirst would drown under enough water. By the time that Draco stepped back, cradling his hand against him as though it was sunburned, Harry could Vanish the crutch.  
  
“Thank you,” Harry whispered, as they began to make their way forwards again. “But next time, let me do that.”  
  
“Next time, let me cast the spell that banishes the dark dogs,” Draco countered.  
  
Harry leaned his hand on Draco’s shoulder and shoved him a little, recognizing an argument he wasn’t going to win. But it was  _good_ to have some arguments that they were never going to settle, and to be alive to have them.  
  
*  
  
They entered the house without triggering any more defensive wards. It turned out that the bricks apparently blocking the house were only an illusion that melted away when Warren murmured a spell she said Ernhardt had taught her.  
  
Looking around, Draco had to admit that he thought it unlikely Ernhardt was here. What were the chances he would forget telling a Socrates Auror about his ancestral home, especially when that Auror had only investigated the case a few years ago?  
  
But it was definitely the home Morningstar had described.  
  
The room they entered was covered with mirrors, down to shiny reflective covers on the chair that confronted Draco with his own face over again when he wanted to turn away from the walls. There was a window in one wall that looked out on a red expanse of desert. Draco shook his head in mild disgust. They had been concentrating so hard on what Morningstar could have meant by the desert, whether it was metaphorical or real, that they had overlooked the very simple possibility of an enchanted window.  
  
Warren moved cautiously through the mirror room, peering now and then at the glass as though looking for something. Jenkins took up a guard position near the door. Draco leaned against the one patch of wall he could find that was clear of mirrors, not far from Jenkins, and closed his eyes, relaxing, focusing on his left arm.  
  
His Dark Mark was the conduit of his flaw, and it often wouldn’t come for the asking; the sensations of Dark Arts would trigger the pain at once, of course, but Dark magic not being actively used at the moment was harder to sense. Draco had hesitated to work with his flaw after what had happened to Macgeorge, but an ability to sense Dark magic was not as inherently dangerous as necromancy, and right now, they needed every advantage they could get.  
  
He concentrated on his breathing until that concentration had replaced most of the other things he could think about, and then turned inwards and  _descended._  
  
It was the only word Draco had found for his flaw, if not the most accurate one. He seemed to float in an abyss, to hang suspended in seawater, and around him floated stars of power. He could feel Harry’s magic if he reached out, and Warren’s. Jenkins was a contained candle not far from him, flickering but not accessible. Draco wondered if her flaw that locked her mind had something to do with that.  
  
And there were the other glowing stars, one in the room with them, one beneath them—that might be the cellar where Ernhardt had kept Morningstar—and one above. Draco frowned and pushed his senses out further. He would have thought there were stronger defenses, which meant more numerous ones.  
  
Then he remembered that strong enough defenses wouldn’t need numbers, and opened his eyes just in time to see the glass in the mirrors explode outwards.  
  
The shards tumbled through the air in a howling chorus, each one accompanied by enough noise that Draco winced and would have ducked his head if he’d had less strict training among the Aurors. But Dark wizards used noise often enough as a distraction technique that Draco knew what to do. He lifted a Shield Charm around himself as he rolled to the floor, wrapping it in a bubble so that he would be protected from the glass that landed around him as well as what might fly directly at him.  
  
He could see the others doing the same thing, and smiled a little grimly. Perhaps it made a difference to be hunting with other Socrates Aurors, after all, instead of with helpless people who would need to be protected.  
  
Then he turned around and got a look at what had come out from behind the mirrors.  
  
And he began to believe that having other Socrates Aurors with him might not make such a difference after all.  
  
*  
  
Harry stared at the thing that pranced towards them, beak clacking and tail swishing, and tried not to cry or vomit. He wasn’t sure which reaction was uppermost in him, and they tilted back and forth dizzily, leaving him breathless and blinded by turns.  
  
The creature was a dead, and resurrected, hippogriff.  
  
There was nothing anymore of Buckbeak in the foul lines of its body. Harry could see rotting muscles under the dripping feathers, which seemed to have been soaked in water or tar to preserve them, but probably it was just the remains of blood and all the other juices in the body. The claws were still fresh and polished, but everything else was bones and carrion. And the  _smell_ that accompanied it was almost worse than anything.  
  
But worst of all was the way the creature of Macgeorge’s creation reared in the middle of the room in a parody of natural hippogriff grace and then came down, unexpectedly, on the front claws, lashing out with its hind hooves at Warren.  
  
She was already gone, dashing to the side and falling to one knee. A boiling torrent of blue-green light left her wand and surrounded the hippogriff. Whatever it had been meant to do—probably to a living opponent—Harry didn’t think she achieved it, but it did succeed in making the hippogriff whip its head around and scream.  
  
Jenkins hit it from the other side at precisely that same moment, with a Lightning Curse that blinded one of the liquefying eyes rolling in their sockets. The hippogriff turned, suddenly clumsy, horse’s tail arched, and screamed again, a bubbling noise that Harry wanted to stop.  
  
And he knew how. Warren and Jenkins had attacked in turn, but it would be a few seconds before Warren got her feet under her and in a better position to strike, and that left the way open for Harry.  
  
He cast a Bladed Silencing Charm, another of those spells he wasn’t supposed to know and couldn’t help knowing, given the life he had led, and it hit the hippogriff’s throat. It flew out the other side again, from the spray of dark flesh and the yell of disgust from Warren, but at least it had the effect he’d intended, and the scream stopped.  
  
This time, the hippogriff focused on him through its one remaining eye, but it only had time to take one step before Draco hit it from behind. The tail and one hind leg exploded, and the hippogriff limped and listed, trying to balance on three limbs.  
  
“Now!” Warren yelled.  
  
Harry thought she was talking to Jenkins, but he caught Draco’s eye and nodded at the same time, which meant four spells hit the hippogriff from four corners of the room, just as it started to drag itself in a circle and flap those heavy, cobwebbed wings. Harry didn’t want to find out if it could fly.  
  
They didn’t have to. Their spells contained and battered the collapsing body, and flesh slid off the bone, at the same time as the Dark magic binding those bones and making them move came up against their spells, and lost. The hippogriff imploded and sagged at the same moment, and nothing flew out to hit them, the way it had with the dead rat. Instead, the hippogriff became an ordinary corpse, if a messy one surrounded by a puddle of deliquescent skin and meat, and slumped to the floor.  
  
They were left breathing harshly, but, hopefully, not too deeply. Harry shook his head and focused on Draco. “Are you all right?” he asked.  
  
Draco nodded. “At least we know that he left  _some_ defenses in Cuthbert’s Corner,” he said.  
  
“Came back here since he swallowed the necromancer, and turned the house into a trap,” Jenkins said. Her face was calm, but her voice held an undertone of fury that Harry would have been reluctant to cross. “I don’t know that we’ll find anything here except more traps.”  
  
“I want to see what’s upstairs, at least,” Draco said, nodding towards the far door from the room. “And what’s beneath.”  
  
Harry caught his eye. Draco gave the little nod that meant his flaw had sensed the Dark magic.  
  
“Very well,” Warren said, frowning. “I remember the way to pass the wards on the stairs, at least.” And she set off.  
  
Harry moved closer to Draco, with Jenkins playing rearguard, and they followed. All of them made sure to step wide around the bones in the middle of the floor.


	5. Upstairs

The first floor rooms were quiet and cool. Draco didn’t recognize any of them from Morningstar’s description, which he thought was an excellent sign that Ernhardt had never brought his prisoners here.  
  
The first corridor showed a number of shut-up rooms, with the smell of dust strong enough that Draco thought it couldn’t be feigned. Then he remembered some of the glamours he had seen on cases with Kellen, which imitated the smell of dust even though there was life and movement in the place, and grimaced.  _Impossible to hope that Ernhardt is unaware of those spells._  
  
“We need to look at every room in here,” Jenkins announced, turning her head from side to side as though she, too, wondered what could be here despite the apparent disuse. “We should split up to save more time.”  
  
“And what happens if Ernhardt  _is_ here, and we  _do_ meet him?” Harry asked quietly. “No. We should stay together.”  
  
Jenkins glanced at Warren, who pursed her lips as though it was necessary to consider the suggestion from every angle before nodding. “We really  _should_ , Simone,” she added, when Jenkins’s mouth opened. “It’s unlikely he’s still here, but it took all four of us to defeat that trap downstairs. What happens if another one of those springs on a single Auror unawares?”  
  
Jenkins made a single, pithy objection, and then nodded. “All right. But can we at least have first choice of which start of the corridor to start with?”  
  
Draco bowed, an unnecessarily provocative gesture, maybe, but Jenkins didn’t need to sound as though Harry’s sound strategy was oppressing her, either. Jenkins gave him a closed look and chose the right-hand side.  
  
The first door had no wards or Dark spells on it that Harry or Draco could detect, and Warren chanted a complicated incantation that revealed none, either. Still, Warren opened it with a spell that sent it banging back against the wall, and they stormed in together.  
  
They stopped a moment later, and Draco noticed that he wasn’t alone in trying to put his back to someone else’s. At least Warren and Jenkins found the right back immediately, so they could stand in a square and scan their find.  
  
It was Ernhardt’s library, or one of them, at least. The dust was as thick here as out in the corridor, but swirling up and down from the suddenness of their entrance into the place. Draco could feel his shoulders tightening. The last case he and Harry had worked had involved libraries, and books that flew off their shelves to attack you, and he wasn’t feeling very fond of them right now.  
  
The shelves held books bound almost uniformly in blue and shining leather, which Draco recognized as real wyvern skin, and which seemed like rather a waste given their titles.  _The Homeliest of Household Charms. Real Potions Making. An Introduction to Advanced Defence. The Joy of Transfiguration._  
  
“They look like textbooks,” Harry muttered. “Are they the ones that would have been in use when Ernhardt was a Hogwarts student?”  
  
“Not all of them,” Draco said, nodding at  _The Joy of Transfiguration._ “I happen to know that McGonagall hasn’t changed her textbooks from the ones we used in at least the time since my father was a student, and I don’t think that Ernhardt was older than my father.” Then he shut up, because to think about Lucius now created a certain kind of dull pain around his heart that he could easily do without.  
  
“Yes, not textbooks,” Warren said suddenly. Draco turned to find her studying the nearest shelf with a quiet eye. A moment later, she waved her wand and said, “ _Wingardium Leviosa_.”  
  
It must have been a superpowered version of the spell, because all the books rose off their shelves at once. Draco flinched automatically, but Warren seemed not to notice. She nodded at the space where the books had sat. “I  _thought_ their spines weren’t quite even with the edge of the shelf,” she said casually.  
  
Draco blinked. The shelf gave on to what looked like a plain wooden wall at first, but none of the other walls in this room were made of wood. When Jenkins disturbed another, lower shelf, he could plainly see the edge of the locked door.  
  
“Where can that go?” Harry demanded, sounding a little rattled that he and Draco hadn’t spotted the door first. “This house isn’t that big.”  
  
“Let’s find out,” Warren said, and after they had surveyed the shelves to make sure they wouldn’t trigger wards by disturbing the books, they cleared them together. Tomes soared overhead, and scrolls, and locked boxes that Draco made a private note to investigate later. They landed in untidy heaps behind them, and then Jenkins stepped forwards and tapped her foot against the edge of the bottom shelf.  
  
The bookcase spun and floated further out into the room. Draco looked at Jenkins. Jenkins shrugged. “My aunt had similar bookcases, under an enchantment, when she grew too old to move them herself. I recognized the glow of the enchantment and took the chance that they would move the same way.”  
  
 _Yes, and you could have blown us up if you were wrong,_ Draco thought, but he had to wonder how much of his irritation came from the fact that he and Harry would ordinarily have done that sort of thing on their own.  
  
The door had a sturdy lock on it, but that wasn’t the main problem. When Warren edged a hand towards it, the defenses they had missed throughout this floor came to humming life, gold and bladed blue, like flickering phoenix fire.  
  
“I think I might know the way around this one,” Harry said, edging forwards. Draco promised himself sourly that he would get the  _next_ problem.  
  
Warren and Jenkins seemed willing to let Harry try, so he crouched down in front of the door and spent a moment delicately groping at the edge. The fire didn’t burn him, but didn’t retreat, either, until Harry made a satisfied sound and stood up.  
  
“I do know this spell,” he said. “It’s not one that a lot of people use, because they think that you need access to phoenixes to make it work. You don’t.” He smiled in Draco’s direction, but Draco found he couldn’t make himself smile back.  
  
Harry frowned at him, but Draco gestured for him to go ahead. Harry sighed, nodded, and faced the door. His wand came down in a sharp thrust and wave forwards as he snapped, “ _Cedo flammam!_ ”  
  
The door shimmered for a moment, and Draco took a prudent step backwards, afraid it would blow up in their faces. But although the flames leaped, they died down in the next second, and Harry sighed richly as the door trembled and swung open.  
  
“ _There_ ,” he said, and bent down to crawl through it.  
  
*  
  
Harry had to admit that Draco was probably wise to catch him back and forbid him from crawling through the door. They hadn’t checked for further wards or Dark spells, and it seemed likely that they would need to do that every step of the way while investigating Cuthbert’s Corner.  
  
Warren said something in a low voice to Jenkins at the way Draco caught Harry by the hair, but, well, the entire Ministry knew they were lovers by now. Harry couldn’t imagine what much more embarrassing speculation their new partners would come up with.  
  
The lock on the door had been a glamour linked to the phoenix enchantment, and with it gone, the way was clear before them. The stairs wound down in a sharp spiral that made Harry glad to let someone else go first once he saw them. Jenkins took point this time, her face sharp and eager in the light of the  _Lumos_ Charm on her wand.  
  
“I wonder if this isn’t just another trap,” Draco murmured when they had descended the first spiral and more and more of them opened up beneath them.  
  
“It could be,” Harry whispered back. Warren was behind them, and he could feel the way she would have liked to poke her wand into their backs for talking at all. Still, Harry had to say something. “But the hiding of the door at least means that he probably wanted to make it difficult to get to. That could indicate something is valuable down here besides the danger. Perhaps a beast guarding a treasure hoard.”  
  
Draco grunted, and said nothing more. The tight turns of the staircase really  _were_ taking all their concentration to negotiate.  
  
Harry wanted to hurry, but forced himself to keep his steps slow and steady, and his eyes on the treads that opened up beneath them. It looked as though someone had made the staircase by nailing a lot of iron ingots together. Harry wondered if Ernhardt had actually come down here all that often. Perhaps he’d had a secret lift.  
  
Then they reached the bottom, and torches flared up on the walls. Harry found himself back-to-back with Draco again, the way they had been in the library, before either of them could speak.  
  
The torches were reacting to an automatic spell that targeted movement, though, from the looks of it. After a few tense seconds, Jenkins waved them forwards, and began to walk around the large stone room that looked like a Potions lab.  
  
Draco was the one who dared to open a large cupboard set in the wall, and jumped back in disgust. Harry looked over his shoulder, and shuddered. There was a pile of bones there, chained to the wall, and too obviously not one of those skeletons Macgeorge had called up. The chains looked old, with scratch marks in the floor and walls.  
  
“He was taking ingredients,” Draco said in a tight voice, and nodded to a pair of scissors on the floor next to the corpse. It would have meant nothing to Harry on its own, but when he squinted, he saw the scissors were delicate, the kind that someone might use to cut small pieces of hair, or toenails. “That was why he wanted this person alive for as long as possible.” Draco backed slowly away from the cupboard, staring into the shadows of the lab. “There are a limited number of potions that need ingredients like that.”  
  
Harry followed Draco’s gaze, but didn’t see anything else that would explain the nature of the potion. While Draco prowled away to look further, Harry turned back to the corpse in the cupboard.  
  
It hadn’t been lucky, like him. He had escaped his cupboard and found a world full of people who loved him, or at least with  _some_ people who loved him. And that hadn’t ended now that he was an adult. He had had a chance even when Lionel died, although he hadn’t known it at the time, and he had Draco now.  
  
This person would never have anyone again.  
  
“I’ll avenge you if I can,” Harry promised quietly. “I don’t know who you were or what Ernhardt wanted you for, but I’m going to see that you’re avenged, that you have justice no matter what the cost.”  
  
“Don’t make vows like that,” Warren said behind him, very sharply. Harry jumped. He hadn’t realized she had come up. “They have a nasty way of coming true, or at least of obliging you to keep them in the nastiest way possible.”  
  
Harry raised his eyebrows. “I vowed that I would take down Voldemort,” he said, and noticed she jerked at the name, her hair swaying back and forth. “I kept that promise. I’m going to keep this one.”  
  
Warren glared at him for a second, then hissed, “Simply remember the price,” and turned away, crossing the lab in response to something Jenkins had called to her.  
  
Harry turned to find his own partner, and discovered him on his hands and knees, scraping up something dark from a channel carved into the floor. Harry shuddered, then braced himself and went over to see what it was.  
  
Draco turned and held up a vial of what looked like blood scrapings. “Blood scrapings,” he said a moment later, and made Harry feel stupid for even bothering to guess. Of course Draco would find a solid answer quickly. “He didn’t use his own blood, I’ll warrant.”  
  
Harry nodded and glanced around the lab again. The shapes on the shelves meant nothing to him, and the books he could see had no titles listed. “Is there any way to tell what he was doing? What kind of potion he was making?”  
  
“There are a limited number of potions that require a living subject  _and_ large amounts of blood,” Draco said. Harry noticed his face was pale, and his fingers were tapping against the vial so that it made his hand look as if it was shaking, the way it had after he saw the Dementor. “I think—Harry, I don’t like what I’m thinking.”  
  
Harry checked on the positions of Warren and Jenkins. They had spread out to the lab’s far corners and were poking about intelligently, as if they knew what they were looking for better than Harry did. They probably did. Labs like this were still alien territory to him. He turned back to Draco. “What are you thinking?”  
  
“You know that we learned consuming a twisted’s blood could make someone a twisted?” Draco’s hands closed around the vial. “The way it happened to Alexander.”  
  
Harry nodded. The third twisted they had hunted had been infected that way, rather than through study of the Dark Arts. “So what?”  
  
Draco held up the vial full of blood shards in silent answer.  
  
Harry shook his head in denial. “That doesn’t make sense, though. Ernhardt is already a twisted. He might have captured others, the way he did Morningstar, and taken their blood in order to control them, but why would he drink it?” He could feel ideas stirring uneasily in the back of his head, and he found that he didn’t want Draco to talk about them, as if keeping silent on them would also keep them from coming true.   
  
“That’s not what I think he was doing.” Draco lowered his voice to a hoarse murmur, which only made him sound scarier. “I think—Harry,  _shit_. I think that he was making other twisted drink  _his_ blood. The corpse we found in the cupboard might just be an experiment gone wrong, not the only one he had.”  
  
Harry made a sharp gesture with his hand. He didn’t want to think that the corpse he’d promised to avenge might have been someone insane and evil.  
  
But did that make him or her any less deserving of vengeance, if Ernhardt had been the cause of their death? And not all the twisted they had hunted had been equally dangerous, or equally insane. It was one reason that Harry thought the Ministry’s definition of twisted needed some work.  
  
He took a long, slow breath now, and then said, “All right. We know he was taking other twisted because he held Morningstar captive. Whatever he did didn’t work with her, obviously, since she managed to escape. But the others? What would making them drink his blood do? Beyond the obvious tactic of making them try to spit it out.”  
  
Draco tried to smile, but he couldn’t make his mouth move. That frightened Harry more than anything else had so far. Draco responded to his sense of humor most of the time. He reached out and grasped Draco’s arm, feeling the muscles shift and lock under his touch.  
  
“I think,” Draco said, “that he’s trying to create an army of people that would be easy to possess. People with his blood inside them, creating a link between them and his original body. People who, like Macgeorge, would have deadly dangerous gifts without the sanity to fight off his possession.”  
  
Harry stared at Draco, and couldn’t think of a single thing to say.  
  
Perhaps it was for the best that the defender Ernhardt had left in his lab attacked them right then.  
  
*  
  
The torches went out.  
  
Draco shut his eyes at once and cast a Shield Charm around both Harry and himself. Then he turned in the direction where he remembered the back of the lab being. The torches had been snuffed as though a magical breeze had blown past them, and since they had lit when Draco and Harry and the others came down the stairs, it seemed obvious that the force putting them out would come from the opposite direction.  
  
Warren cursed, but her voice was lost a moment later in the rising screech of a metal door coming open—or so it sounded like to Draco. He doubted that Ernhardt would use anything as simple as metal doors to defend his secrets, which meant something else that could sound like that. He braced, and could feel Harry bracing beside him.  
  
“ _Lumos_ ,” they said at the same time, and the light sprang up from their wands and swept the room in a glowing blaze.  
  
The thing caught in the light froze for a moment, and then came towards them, shrieking still. Draco swallowed. He thought he could hear words in those cries, which made them seem less like clashing metal and more like the screams of horribly tortured voices, taken and torn until there was nothing human left in them.  
  
 _Like the voices of those victims who have died in this cellar…_  
  
And yes, the light was stabbing through them, or at least through the transparent bodies that led the charge—not through the trail of what looked like mud and smoke that flowed behind them. They were ghosts, probably the remnants of whatever was left when Ernhardt’s feasting finished.  
  
Draco’s hands tightened around his wand. He said to Harry, “These are the remains of his victims. We’ll have to fight them rather—differently from the way we did the hippogriff.”  
  
“You don’t say,” Harry muttered. He was looking at the ghosts, too, and there was a coiled tension in him that made Draco wonder what he was thinking. Then he changed his mind. He wasn’t entirely sure that he wanted to know, from the way that Harry’s fingers scrabbled steadily at his wand, and the way his eyes never moved away from the ghosts, either.  
  
“The ghosts,” said Jenkins at the same time, appearing next to them with a little toss of her head. “What do you suggest we do, Auror Malfoy?”  
  
 _Probably turning to me because she thinks I’m the one who knows the most about Dark magic,_ Draco thought, but he probably  _was_ , and there was the chance Harry might not want to fight the ghosts because of what he knew about the victims. He squared his shoulders and said, “There’s a spell we can use that will tear them apart.”  
  
Harry stared at him. “Do we have to?”  
  
Draco nodded at him, and then nodded to the way the ghosts were hammering on the edges of their Shield Charm, transparent fists rising and falling mindlessly. “These aren’t ghosts like the ones that live at Hogwarts, Harry,” he said gently. “Do you want to leave them to endure the torments that Ernhardt has in mind for them? Or what he might do to them if he comes back?”  
  
Harry breathed a few times. Then he said, “No.”  
  
Draco nodded again, and lifted his wand. Warren was at her partner’s shoulder, now, and looking at him with that same kind of steel faith, the kind that said they knew Draco knew how to survive and they would follow him no matter how much they hated the spells he might use. In his own way, Draco preferred that over the blind trust he would have got from some Aurors if his name had the same connotations as Harry’s.  
  
“The spell hits them with a blast of life, of living memory, which is the opposite of everything they are now, and they can’t survive it,” he said. “You have to think as hard as you can of some moment when you were doing something that only living people can do. It doesn’t have to be a happy memory, but it shouldn’t be simple despair—that’s something they understand only too well. Fucking, or fighting, or bleeding. Choose.”  
  
Jenkins closed her eyes, then blinked them open again. Draco would have mistaken it for a gesture of boredom in other contexts, but in this one, he was fairly sure that Jenkins had actually picked the memory and settled it in her mind. She nodded to him, and behind her, Warren did the same thing a moment later.  
  
“Yes,” Harry said.  
  
Draco smiled at him, and wondered for a moment if there was a chance that they might be using the same memory. He was remembering the first time he and Harry had slept together, had slept together and talked, and certain things had been made clear to Harry that no one else had ever tried to teach him.  
  
But they didn’t need to talk about it right now, and there was no time. Draco turned to face the ghosts. “Hold the memory in your mind as strongly as you can, as if you were about to cast a Patronus,” he said. “Then flick your wand up.” He demonstrated the movement. “And say  _Felicitas._ ”  
  
Three voices roared out the word at the same time, none louder than Harry’s. Draco had to wait a moment, from sheer surprise—and because he was busy cutting a hole in the Shield Charm for the spells to get through—and then let his own spell fly.  
  
The memories struck the churning spirits and washed over them. For a moment, they trembled as though the memories would light their dead eyes and return them to life. Draco swallowed. They were in  _trouble_ if that happened, and not just because it would have been a kind of impossible miracle for Ernhardt and Macgeorge to have raised ghosts that could resist this spell.  
  
But then a golden light spread through the murk and the white parts of the attack both, and split it apart. Thunder filled the lab, and Draco clapped his hand instinctively over the vial with the scrapings of dried blood to make sure it was safe in his pocket.  
  
The ghosts vanished. The torches came back on, and they stood there breathing in air that felt better without the taint of coming Dark magic.  
  
“We’ve learned as much as we can here, I think,” Jenkins said, moving for the stairs. “Come on. We have more rooms to investigate.”  
  
Draco met Harry’s eyes before he followed. Harry nodded. They were united in their decision to say nothing about their conclusions for now as to why Ernhardt might have kept twisted here and taken their blood.  
  
As they made their way back up the stairs, Draco could feel Warren watching them thoughtfully. No,  _him_  thoughtfully. When he turned around and stared at her, her eyes flickered away from him.  
  
 _No need to panic yet,_ Draco decided, deliberately turning his back on her.  _But no reason to think that she’s friendly, either. She has yet to prove herself either way._


	6. Downstairs

They had found nothing interesting in the other rooms, even after diligently searching for secret panels and doors in the same way they had studied the library. Ernhardt had apparently removed a lot of his personal possessions soon after he set up the Potions lab. Draco used spells to analyze the age of the dust this time, and nodded in grim satisfaction when they revealed that no one had entered the chambers in several years. The most exciting thing that happened to them on the rest of the first floor was ducking a falling bit of wood that Warren incinerated before it could touch them.  
  
Now they stood on the ground floor again, and faced the door to the cellar.  
  
"Do you think we'll find anything new there?" Harry muttered to Draco, while Jenkins scanned down the stairs ahead of them and Warren sorted through the shards of the mirrors on the floor for clues. "Maybe he kept Morningstar in the lab and took blood from her instead, like the rest."  
  
Draco shook his head. "Her account was different, and at the time, she really thought there was a chance you could help her. I don't think she would have lied deliberately." He took another glance at the enchanted window that showed the desert. "Which doesn't mean that Ernhardt might not have done something that confused her senses."  
  
Harry nodded and opened his mouth to continue the conversation, but Jenkins came bounding back up the stairs and shook her head. "There are no traps on the steps themselves," she said.  
  
Warren turned around and smiled at her a little. "And there were no traps in that kitchen in Manchester, either," she murmured.  
  
Jenkins grinned at her. "Well, there  _weren't_ after you finished smashing your way out of the Puzzle Box."  
  
Draco blinked. The Puzzle Box curse was an extremely sophisticated one, and it said a lot for Warren's strength of both will and magic if she had managed to destroy one from the inside. He felt a knot of tension at the back of his neck uncoil as he looked at Warren. With someone like that at his side, he might be able to bring himself to trust them further.  
  
Jenkins caught his eye, and sniffed, as if she knew his thought processes and didn't appreciate that he hadn't trusted them already. Then she turned to Harry, of all people. "Have you had any visions since we entered the house?" she demanded.  
  
Harry stared at her, and Draco put a hand on his arm to stop him from any outbursts he might be planning. Of course, although most of the Department had known about Harry's flaw, they hadn't encouraged him to  _use_ it. Harry seemed to remember the difference between that situation and this one in time, though, and he nodded, blinked, swallowed, and answered, "No. It's dramatic and noticeable when I do, because I suffer the pain the murdered person feels."  
  
"And during the Larkin case, you had visions of yourself as the dying one, right?" Jenkins demanded. "So it's not limited to other people, or non-Aurors?"  
  
Harry grimaced and nodded again. "I'll let you know if I have one about any of us."  
  
Jenkins inclined her head and then gathered everyone in their small group with her eyes. Draco had to admit, reluctantly, that she had some qualities that made her a good leader. A pity about the temper that went along with that, of course.   
  
"I want everyone to use their flaws as we go down these stairs," Jenkins said quietly. "Because it's true I couldn't detect any wards or traps, and I'm usually pretty good at those. But what we've found in the house so far indicates we'll find  _something_. And it's stupid not to use gifts that could help us only because of the Ministry's prejudice against the twisted."  
  
"Well, there's also the fear of ending up like Macgeorge," Draco said, and winced a little as Jenkins scowled at him. "But I already used my flaw on this floor. There is definitely something powerful and magical below us."  
  
Jenkins cocked her head, interested in the words and not his tone, Draco thought. "As powerful as the hippogriff and the ghosts?"  
  
"It felt that way," Draco said, discovering that he didn't much like it when someone other than Harry looked at him with that hungry-for-confirmation expression on their faces.  _Perhaps my early dreams of being Head Auror were never destined to work out._ "It was hard to tell."  
  
"Concentrate again now," Jenkins said, and took a step towards him as though she would personally force him to use his flaw if he didn't start doing so. "I want to know what we're facing."  
  
"It doesn't work that way," Draco pointed out in a flat voice as he pulled his sleeve up and held out his arm. Jenkins didn't flinch from the Mark, which earned her a few points in Draco's mind. Warren pressed close from behind them, too. Harry was the one who put a hand on Draco's shoulder, as though to tell him he didn't have to use his flaw if he didn't want to. "I can tell something is there, and that it's powerful and violent Dark magic, but if you'd asked me which was the rotting hippogriff and which were the defensive ghosts, I wouldn't have been able to tell you."  
  
Jenkins was excellent at condescending smiles, it appeared. "I meant level of power."  
  
"Why  _wouldn't_ he have defenses there as powerful as all the other ones we've been facing so far?" Harry muttered, but fell silent when Draco squeezed his hand back. He didn't mind using his flaw like that, not when it would help to protect the two of them as well as their temporary partners.  
  
Once again, Draco fell into the soft starry sea that meant he was accessing his flaw, and reached out towards the source of Dark magic beneath them. The two other pulsing black stairs he had sensed were cold now, proof enough that they had been the defenses they'd already disarmed.  
  
But the one beneath them...  
  
It was  _wide,_ Draco could figure out, now that he was concentrating on it and not distracted by other magic (and intent on showing Jenkins up). It spread out like a pool of water beneath them. And it waited. There was an intelligence there that hadn't been in the hippogriff or the ghosts.  
  
Draco reported that, and Jenkins and Warren exchanged another private glance that left Harry and Draco on the outside. Harry leaned on Draco's shoulder in silent commiseration. Draco squeezed his arm and watched the stairs to the cellar thoughtfully. At least, if it was like water, it was unlikely to come up and fetch them.  
  
But of course they would have to go down and meet it, and find out if Ernhardt had left any clues to his current location. Being an Auror was more like being a Gryffindor than Draco had ever known when he chose the career.  
  
"Let's go," Jenkins said. "You felt nothing on the stairs?" She nodded briskly to Draco, already turning towards the cellar.  
  
"No," Draco said. His heartbeat and his adrenaline were up, he realized, his fingers on the wand slightly sweaty. Well. At least it was better than the paralyzing shock he had felt when encountering the Dementor.  
  
"Then let's go," Jenkins repeated, and once again she took point, Warren falling in behind Draco and Harry as if to herd them along.  
  
Draco focused his will and his gaze ahead and did his best to forget his unfortunate comparison about Warren. Ultimately, they were all equals, and if they forgot that, then Ernhardt might be able to turn them against each other.  
  
The stairs were quiet, wide, stone steps, infinitely easier to navigate than the twisting flights into the lab. That only made Draco's skin prickle with more sweat, his eyes aiming more ahead.  
  
*  
  
Harry bit his lip as he saw the flashes of dark lightning around the edges of his vision, and heard what could be gathering whispers--the  _potential_ of one of his visions, not the actual thing yet. But they were entering a place where one of them could die, and his flaw was reacting.  
  
There was nothing yet, though, so he focused his eyes ahead of him and kept walking. He would have to make sure that he informed Draco and the others the minute he saw something definite.  
  
"What was that?"  
  
Draco had swirled his wand ahead of him, and a streak of light like a bright version of the dark flashes along Harry's eyesight split the air apart ahead of them. Harry could make out the steps as clearly as though they were in sunlight, and part of the cellar. It looked like an ordinary set of rooms, some with open doors, done in wood and stone.   
  
But what made his hair stand on end was the moving shadows beneath them, surging and falling like waves.  
  
Draco's light went out, and their  _Lumos_ Charms faded at the same moment. Jenkins made a disgusted sound, but she didn't waste time scolding Draco when, Harry thought, she could tell that this was the work of their enemy. Her wand arched sharply down, or Harry could hear the sound of it doing so, and the next moment, a pale green light like foxfire began to filter up from the steps.  
  
The green light was less revealing than the  _Lumos_ Charms, but it still showed the edges of shadows with no visible sources. The shadows rose, and advanced. Harry wondered for a moment if Ernhardt had filled his cellar with invisible enemies.  
  
 _No. These are shadows themselves,_ Harry thought, even as his head rang and his skin tightened with the sense that a vision was imminent.  _This is darkness. It can kill us all by itself._  
  
The pain left his head; apparently that the darkness could kill had been what the vision wanted to show him. Harry took a step back and called on the best spell he knew against darkness, one that at least wouldn't get him in trouble with Warren and Jenkins for being Dark. " _Expecto Patronum!_ "  
  
The silver stag blazed as it sprang forth from his wand, blazed the way Harry could only remember it doing once before, when it was up against those hundreds of Dementors who had gone after Sirius. For a moment, it stood on the step in front of Harry with its head tossed back and its nostrils blowing as if it couldn't decide the direction the enemy was in; then it leaped down and speared its antlers into one of the crawling shadows.  
  
The shadow screamed. The noise was a thin, high note that quickly trailed away into the piercing regions beyond Harry's hearing. Then the shadow ripped apart, and the stag was left dancing in front of it, hooves trampling on what looked like the last shreds.  
  
The other shadows halted. Harry was sure they would get the courage to come forth in a moment, but for that moment, the stag guarded them, head bowed.  
  
Then Jenkins and Warren called on their Patronuses, and a wispy leopard and a glowing wolf joined the stag. The shadows moved towards the leopard, which seemed to be the weakest one, but the stag stamped its hooves and the wolf howled, and the shadows halted again.  
  
"Could they be related to Dementors?" Jenkins spoke while barely moving her lips. "Is that one reason they fear the Patronuses?"  
  
"They fear creatures of light," Draco said, as flatly as if he was reading the answer off a board in Snape's class. "We have to have some way to bring more light in."  
  
"I have the answer," Warren said, and began to chant.  
  
The shadows surged towards her as if they recognized someone who could defeat them. The Patronuses immediately leaped into battle. The leopard's claws flew, the stag kicked and pierced, and the wolf used its teeth, so that shadows whirled and danced away from in front of them.   
  
But it wasn't going to be enough, Harry could see now. Some of the shadows were learning how to creep past them. They were flying, or growing flaps stretching out from the sides that looked like wings, and soaring overhead, hanging from the ceiling like bats and crawling there like mice. They would creep over the protection of the Patronuses and drop down on the Aurors.  
  
Harry turned and canted his body so that he could reach the right angle and somewhat protect Draco's back at the same time. The spell that came to mind was another of those he wasn't supposed to know, the kinds of spells that the Aurors didn't admit existed but slipped into their training anyway. Harry reckoned he should be grateful that the Ministry that would barely admit anything aloud still took the safety of their workers into such consideration as that.  
  
" _Conflagro desideratum!"_  
  
The fire leaped and looped above him, phoenix-colored for a moment, like the ward that had protected Ernhardt's lab, and then cool blue, and then blinding, blazing white. It hovered close to the shadows, and destroyed the spaces they could hide in. They halted for a moment, and Harry felt the silent agitation that seemed to serve them for making noise or protesting.  
  
This light could only burn as long as his will held, and Harry knew that he didn't have the magical strength to keep it up for long after defeating the dark dogs. But he kept it up long enough for Warren to complete her spell.  
  
Light filled the cellar from end to end, hanging and shining on the doors beneath them, welling up through the stairs as though a sun was rising there, and coming down from the ground floor. It was soft sunlight, natural radiance, yellow and white and all those more obscure colors that Harry sometimes thought he saw in the sun and sometimes didn't, and it lay there and shimmered.  
  
The shadows didn't have a chance. They faded, blasted, and the walls and floor were clear again.  
  
"I didn't know you could do that," Jenkins said to Warren, in an undertone that Harry didn't know if they were meant to hear.  
  
"I don't do it often," Warren said shortly, and moved past them on the stairs to take the point beside her partner.  
  
Harry watched her thoughtfully, noticing that Jenkins did the same thing. The spell hadn't seemed like a Dark one, but it wasn't one that Harry was familiar with, either; he had hunted enough vampires in his time that he would have expected to know a simple charm to produce sunlight like that.  
  
Jenkins caught his eye, though, and gave him a nasty look that Harry mentally translated as "stop staring at my partner." He flipped her a little salute and kept walking down the stairs, content that they were safe for now.  
  
 _If that's so, why is Draco looking so pale?_  
  
*  
  
Draco shivered. The shadows had been deadly enough; he had been sure they would destroy anyone they touched, despite not having empirical proof of that.  
  
But there was still something beneath them, something that inflicted the Mark on his arm with a harsher sting than anything since the magic of the twisted on their last case.  
  
 _What we thought was the twisted._ The man who had run about flaying non-famous people and using his flaw to write the truth of their lives on their bodies in their blood looked harmless compared to the combination of Ernhardt and Macgeorge.  
  
At the moment, though, no danger was in sight, and the pain wasn't bad enough to make Draco's left arm useless. So they continued downstairs, through the sunlight of Warren's spell, and reached the floor without another attack.  
  
Draco glanced around, studying the room for hidden doors of the type that had lurked behind the library shelves. At the moment, he saw nothing like that, and perhaps Ernhardt had not felt the need for them in the cellar, after all. There were multiple rooms here, as the open doors showed, and thick walls, but also plenty of small niches. From the scars on the floor in those, certain pedestals and tables and the like had recently stood there, but there was no other trace of them now.  
  
"Shall we split up?" Jenkins asked, in the voice of someone who knew what the answer would be.  
  
"We've needed all four of us to defeat every danger so far," Draco pointed out. "Even in two-partner teams, we might not be able to keep these enemies at bay. So no."  
  
Jenkins only nodded and spun her wand for a moment through her fingers. Draco could almost feel her mind ticking out the fleeting seconds and her banked impatience at the length of time this search would take them if they went together. But she said nothing.  
  
"It looks like there are five rooms," Harry said, making Draco jump a little. While he'd been staring at Jenkins, Harry had investigated the setup of the cellar. "Not counting this one. Does anyone have any particular preference for where we start?" He glanced at Draco.  
  
Draco closed his eyes, but couldn't focus on any individual direction for the sensation in his Dark Mark. In the end, he opened his eyes and shrugged. "It feels like whatever else is waiting to attack is generalized all around us," he said.  
  
"Whatever else is waiting?" Warren's voice is low. "Those shadows were not the main danger?"  
  
"They were  _a_ danger," Draco said. "But there's still Dark magic here, and that's what my flaw reacts to."  
  
Warren pressed her lips together after a moment and nodded. "Then I don't see that it matters where we start."  
  
Harry was the one who led the way into the room to their immediate left, and thus saved them from standing around like idiots waiting for someone else to pick. The sunlight seemed dimmer here, but then Draco realized that Harry's wand still glowed with the  _Lumos_ Charm, which cast spinning shadows as Harry moved it around in a slow circle.  
  
This room had thick walls of stone, and in one were brackets that looked like the kind that would have fastened to a chain. There was a cupboard in one corner, open and empty except for a few shards of glass from broken vials. Draco bent down and sniffed at the red liquid scattered on the floor there, but to his immense relief, it was cranberry juice, a common ingredient in some sleeping potions, and not blood.  
  
There was nothing else in the room, at least to casual sight. Warren began a slow prowl along the corner while Jenkins examined the ceiling, and Harry began to cast any number of spells that would sometimes identify hidden rooms and tunnels, though the going was slow.  
  
Draco fell back against the wall and shut his eyes again, clutching his arm. It throbbed worse than ever, but when he edged back towards the door and away from it, the sensation didn't change. It didn't seem to be located in this room, then.  
  
Abruptly, there was a sound like an indrawn breath, and then low curses from Jenkins and Warren, in the sort of voice that said they were too frightened to make louder sounds. Draco's eyes snapped open.  
  
In front of them stood the Dark Lord.  
  
Draco's wand clattered to the floor before he could stop himself. He backed against the wall, and this time took no comfort in the way that the stone wall didn't move, in the way that there was no place to hide in here beyond the obvious.   
  
The Dark Lord stood beside the cupboard, and looked slowly around the room. He looked as Draco remembered him from Malfoy Manor, the last year of the war, his red eyes shining with power, his face smooth and grey and moon-like. Around his feet coiled Nagini, lifting her head and darting her tongue out. She seemed to focus on Draco, and Draco remembered the Dark Lord's threats to feed him to her.  
  
Warren and Jenkins had spread out near Draco, focused and trembling. In between them and the Dark Lord stood Harry.  
  
Who raised his fists and said, "You're only a nightmare, only something this place has taken from my mind and made real. I defeated you once, and I can do it again.  _Expelliarmus! Mentem commuto!_ "  
  
The last spell, Draco didn't know, but it made the image of the Dark Lord shatter into pieces, at the same moment as his wand flew away from his left hand. The snake lunged at Harry. Harry hissed, and she writhed away from him, and then shattered into the same small, sparkling pieces as her master.  
  
Harry licked his lips and glanced at the rest of them. "That's what's here," he said hoarsely. "A spell or curse that reaches into your memory, finds what you most fear, and makes it real. I encountered it once in the home of a Dark wizard I was hunting." He shut his eyes and swayed on his feet for a moment.  
  
"How did you get rid of it?" Jenkins demanded. "The spell?" She shrugged when Draco glared at her, as if she didn't believe Harry might need  _time_ to recover from seeing the apparition of his worst fear in front of him.  
  
"The spell, yes," Harry said, nodding. "But also the refusal to believe it was real. The stubbornness is how you defeat it."  
  
"You cast the spell that you did use to defeat  _him_  at the same time," Draco had to point out. "If it's only stubbornness, why was that spell necessary?"  
  
Harry shrugged, unabashed. "The more realistic you can make the defeat, the more it helps. That spell helped me remember that I'd already defeated him once before, and that I'm standing here, alive, and he isn't. Obviously it isn't a one-to-one correspondence, since I wasn't the one who killed Nagini, but I think the curse was pulling on a nightmare I had of facing the two of them at once. We--" And he broke off and spun around.  
  
Draco was in time to see the stone wall snap open and jelly-like arms shoot out to grasp Warren, tugging her into the wall. The next instant, the stone panel fell down again and covered the hole the magic had made as though nothing had happened.  
  
Jenkins gave a ripping, snarling sound, and moved a step forwards. Her hands reached out as if to feel at the stone, but Harry blasted off a Shield Charm and got it between her and the place where Warren had been taken. Jenkins turned around, raising her wand.  
  
"What good is your advice about stubbornness if it kills her before she can stop it?" Jenkins roared.  
  
"We don't know that was her fear," Harry said. He was studying the stone, his lips working. Then he nodded, and Draco saw the dangerous smile forming at the corners of his eyes.  
  
"I think I know one way to stop this," he said. " _Finite Incantatem!_ "  
  
And the walls vanished--to reveal a nest of tentacles that struck out at them, grabbing Draco's face in a sucker and drawing him irresistibly forwards.


	7. The Greatest Fear

Harry dropped to the floor immediately and raised a Spiked Shield Charm around him when the tentacles struck. He didn't know for sure whose fear it was, but whoever it was hadn't done anything about it yet, and that might mean they couldn't, or had only faced this fear in nightmares and didn't know how to defeat it.  
  
The tentacles hit the Spiked Shield Charm and lost most of their length, dropping chopped and writhing to the floor. Harry bounded up to his feet again and hit them while they were still confused. He had to focus on the tentacles as much as he would have liked to lash out at the unseen body, because Warren was in there, and Draco now, and Jenkins just barely backing away, and he would have hit somebody.  
  
 _Draco_.  
  
Harry told himself sternly that yes, it was horrible, but he had dealt with having his partner in danger before, and he and Draco had talked about the crazy way he'd behaved on a few cases, and there were more important things than immediately rescuing him.  
  
Such as clearing a space and getting a look at what kind of creature they were fighting, and yelling at Jenkins, "Is this your fear?"  
  
Jenkins shook her head. Her face was white, but from the way she pressed her lips together and glared at the tentacles, Harry thought it was from rage and not terror. "No. I suspect it's Thomasina's. She's hinted a few times that she used to be afraid of things beneath her bed that would reach up and grab her. Some story her uncle disciplined her with."  
  
"Her uncle was an  _arsehole_ ," Harry said, and slammed a Blasting Curse into one reaching tentacle so hard that it simply blew apart.  
  
"I agree," Jenkins said, and did a complicated spin on one heel that resulted in small bits of rubbery flesh all around her.  
  
Harry darted to the side. With the stone panels blasted off the beast's hiding place, he could see better, and here and there was a glimpse of a scarlet Auror robe, or a kicking leg or flailing arm. Still darkness beyond that, and the slimy feeling of Dark magic along his skin that Harry, by now, could identify as the fear curse. Still no sign of Draco or Warren coming back out on their own.  
  
"I'm going to do something Dark," he said, without looking at Jenkins. "You can report me later if you want, but right now we have to get them out."  
  
"Do your worst, Potter," Jenkins said, in a tone of voice that indicated she was already on her own way there.  
  
Harry nodded and closed his eyes, reaching for the memory of spells he hadn't performed since the Gina Hendricks case. These were complex enough that he would have to put aside all fear, all anger, all intention of charging in there and rescuing Draco. He couldn't see his enemy yet. He would be useless without it. All the lessons that Draco had tried to teach him in recent months marched through his head and then fell silent.  
  
He reached, and the power was there. He reached, and the concentration was there. He reached, and the feeling was there.  
  
He held his wand up to his lips and kissed the shaft, not because he had to but because it made him feel better, and shouted, " _Confringo cordem!_ "  
  
The spell blasted out of him, directed by his will, and he opened his eyes in time to see Jenkins turning on him. She would be thinking only of the Latin translation of the spell, Harry thought, the  _words,_ not the intent.  
  
"This is intention magic," he told her. "I know what I'm doing. That spell was aimed at our enemy, and not anyone else."  
  
Before she could lay into him about how Dark intention magic was, or how dangerous, Harry heard the explosion. His curse had landed, and made the heart of the beast--which had to have a heart, which would be all reaching tentacles and writhing limbs in a child's imagination but would have a heart in that imagination mingled with the terror of an adult and the limits of the curse--blow up.  
  
"Now," he said, and strode forwards as the limbs began to fall still. Jenkins was right behind him, and didn't waste time in recriminations. Harry nodded to her. He valued Draco as the partner he had had the most, but there was something to be said equally for silent competence and rage primed to hunt.  
  
*  
  
It had taken Draco long moments to realize that the beast wasn't going to kill him right away, that air leaked in around the edges of the gripping sucker pad and that he could move more than he should have been able to if those ropy arms had wanted to grab him and simply bind his limbs to his body.  
  
When he knew that, the fury blew through him.  
  
He gripped his wand, which the beast hadn't had the sense to take from him, and thought a nonverbal hex as hard as he could, since the sucker was blocking his mouth. A moment later, the beast lurched and let out a pained scream. Draco drew his head free from the weakening hold and stepped to the side in what looked like another cellar room, blank stone walls and floor and ceiling, throwing hexes in an unending stream, anything that occurred to him and sounded good.  
  
The beast recoiled from him, giving him more of a chance to look around. There was no sign of Warren except one waving arm that might have been her, but Draco could see a channel cut into the floor with the familiar streaks of blood there. He spat on the floor, and the beast lurched back at him, because in his disgust over what Ernhardt had done, he'd allowed himself to be distracted from his hexes.  
  
One arm around his feet, one whipping to bind his arms to his body, and this time, a thinner and more flexible tentacle with small protrusions on the end that might have been fingers probing at his wand. Draco gripped it all the more tightly, and thought of the war and his parents and the fact that Harry might not survive this without him to keep his fingers clutching.  
  
Warren screamed. Draco flinched.  _No question now whose worst terror this is._  
  
Then he felt the magic building around him, like a lightning storm in reverse, rising from the earth instead of the sky. Draco's hair stood on end, and he swallowed several times. More arms whipped around and away from him, in the direction of the main room, and Draco was sure the beast had felt the main threat and would go for it.  
  
Then the magic landed.  
  
 _Harry. It has to be._ Draco's body rolled and rocked with the blow, a sympathetic echo of pain in his heart telling him what it had been. He hadn't known that Harry knew intention magic, or at least not that particular spell, which had been described as one of the most powerful and dangerous in the books his father had owned. It could make the heart of anyone who was in the room or the way explode, unless the caster was very careful to direct it only against one enemy.  
  
 _I don't think of Harry as careful. But he does always surprise me._  
  
Suddenly the arms holding him had gone limp. Draco shrugged and struggled out of them and ran further into the cellar, keeping eyes open both for some sign of Warren and further clues as to what Ernhardt had done here.  
  
There was no sign of her, no matter how far Draco ranged, but of course he couldn't get very far with all those mounded tentacles piling up in the doorway. Grimly, he set to chopping them apart, making flesh fly and choking on the foul blood, or purple-red liquid, that dripped and stank from them.  
  
"Draco?"  
  
 _Harry_. Draco reached back and took Harry's hand without ceasing in his tentacle destruction. "What took you so long?" he asked, proud of the way his voice didn't tremble.  
  
"Oh, we just thought you could handle it on your own," Harry said, and rested his chin, hard, for a moment on Draco's shoulder, before he moved aside and let Jenkins pass them in the search for her own partner. Harry lingered to look into Draco's eyes and touch his hand. "You're really all right?" he breathed.  
  
"That wasn't  _my_ worst fear."  
  
Harry tilted his head. "True. I hope that Warren can hold up as well as you did."  
  
"A bit of help here, please."  
  
Draco turned in the direction of Jenkins with his wand out when he heard her tone. It didn't mean there were more enemies here, as he told himself a moment later. But he had never heard her sound like that, and he  _had_ heard snapping, and defensiveness, and smooth offensiveness presented without a break or a blink. Harry was moving forwards beside him, so at least Draco wasn't the only one who thought something was different.  
  
They found Jenkins crouched beside Warren with one hand on her partner's forehead and the other over her heart. From her intent expression, she might have been willing blood and energy into Warren to make the heartbeat continue. She looked up at Draco before her eyes moved to Harry.  
  
"You ended the beast's existence with your curse before she could," she said. Draco winced. He had seen thrown knives that were less sharp than the look on Jenkins's face. "But you said the one who had the fear should be the one to dispel it. Does that mean that she is lost in her own mind now, because you took the kill away from her?"  
  
"Let me see." Harry shoved Draco out of the way and went to kneel beside Warren as if he were a Healer. Draco rolled his eyes and followed, because  _clearly_ some people needed help. He crouched down beside Harry and took a long look at Warren.  
  
Her face was still, as if she had lost all power to form expression, or all the muscles in her cheeks, or both at once. Draco reached out, caught Jenkins's gaze, and waited for her nod before he touched Warren's chin. Yes, it was cold, and when he looked, her breathing was so slow he could have mistaken her for dead.  
  
"You have to revive her," Jenkins said to Harry, in the same calm, flat tone she might have used to discuss lunch. "You need to reverse the spell that slew the beast, and let her battle it."  
  
"I can't reverse a spell that made its heart explode." Harry leaned back on his heels and stared at Jenkins. "That's the way it works. There's no magic that can resurrect the dead." He shuddered a little as he said that, and Draco wondered why.  
  
"You died and came back." Jenkins's left hand was creeping up towards Harry's throat, while her right remained fastened on her wand. Draco shifted, ready to get between them just in case Jenkins got any ideas. "You can fucking well make sure that she gets the same chance. Bring back the beast."  
  
"I don't know how to do that," Harry said, with a violent shake of his head. "I'm sorry this happened. But I don't know  _why_ it did. What I told you about the curse is the sum total of knowledge I have about it."  
  
Jenkins laughed. Draco covered his ears, but dropped his hands quickly when he saw her mouth moving again. Any word she uttered might be a threat. "As if I would believe that, when you know all sorts of Dark spells and unexpected things. Give me a spell,  _now_ , or I'll take it from your mind." She aimed her wand at Harry's eyes.  
  
"Stop being an  _idiot_ ," Draco said, sharply enough to shock even himself. "You know as well as I do that that won't help or change anything. Let me look at her, and perhaps I can come up with something."  
  
Jenkins said something about Dark wizards and Death Eaters that Draco didn't bother listening to. You should never listen to someone grieving, he had learned. Leave them room to cry it out, and then come and interview them later, when they could add some productive details to your list of them. He bent over Warren and took another look at her.  
  
Her face was  _too_ slack, Draco decided at once. Her eyes weren't moving under her eyelids as if she were dreaming; her skin was as cold to the touch as if she were dead, and it shouldn't have chilled that fast, not even if she was in shock. And she wasn't dead. Jenkins seemed certain of that.  
  
Draco abruptly sat back and looked up at Jenkins. He didn't know whether the suspicion thrumming in his mind was true, but he was certain enough to speak the words. "What kind of spell would you trust in a situation like this?"  
  
"I've already used all the spells I know." Jenkins sounded like a tiger about to charge, now.  
  
"You misunderstood my question," Draco said, his voice just getting lower. Snape had used that tactic in the past, and it was effective; now it made Jenkins shut the fuck up and listen to him. "If this had happened elsewhere and she was like this and you didn't have my partner to blame for it, what would you cast?"  
  
"A spell to keep her warm," Jenkins said. "A spell to make her heart beat."  
  
Draco nodded in reluctant admiration. Once Jenkins knew what was wanted, she at least didn't hold back on her answers. And now she watched him with her hand quivering on her wand, as though she would cast those spells again at a command from him.  
  
"I think those are the spells you should use now," he said. "One right after the other, as fast as you can."  
  
Jenkins understood before Harry, from his frown, did. She turned to Warren and jabbed her wand down so fast that she almost hit her in the eyelid. She hissed out the spells, what Draco recognized as a standard Warming Charm and another with an unfamiliar incantation, but one wouldn't usually pronounce them with such emphasis.  
  
Warren wavered as though she was underwater, and then broke apart into the same sparkling star-pieces that had marked the demise of the Dark Lord and his snake when Harry destroyed them. Harry gasped aloud. Draco smiled. And Jenkins scrambled up and turned towards a corner of the room that none of them had noticed before, as if it was blocked by an invisible wall.  
  
"That curse is powerful," Warren said grimly, stepping forwards and using her body a little to shield the tight clasp Jenkins had on her arm. "I was shouting at you for the last five minutes, and you couldn't hear or see me."  
  
"Because we were dealing with your partner's greatest fear," Draco said smoothly. "Which only leaves mine."  
  
"Call it forth."  
  
Harry glared at Jenkins. "What do you mean? You're barely over your panic at the thought of  _her_ being dead, and you want Draco to encourage something else to attack us?"  
  
"We can deal better with it when we know it's coming." Jenkins had gone back to her implacable self again. Draco wondered idly if the flaw locking her mind helped her keep her emotions at bay, as well. "We would have been able to deal with the tentacles if we had kept in mind that the curse would strike at another of us soon." She nodded at Draco. "If he puts what he fears in a form he can destroy, then perhaps the curse will end, since it's had purchase on all of our minds now."  
  
Draco had to admit that made sense, and he rose to his feet and turned to face one of those blank walls wondering if it would pull aside to reveal his fear.  
  
There was only one problem. Now that he thought about it, he didn't actually know what his greatest fear was.  
  
Several things he would have said were before the last few years of his life, like his parents disowning him or seeing Harry almost die, he had experienced, had gone through and survived. That meant he wasn't likely to see his parents come walking out of the walls with a Dementor at their heels and evil laughter on their lips. He stood tapping his wand against the heel of his hand, aware of Harry's concerned gaze and the critical silence coming from Jenkins getting thicker and thicker.  
  
Then Draco knew. He could feel an alteration in the darkness around him at the same moment as he realized it, the thickening, the tightening, the soft-breathing anticipation of the curse as it wormed its way into his mind.  
  
"What is it?" Harry whispered. He had come to stand at Draco's side, at Draco's elbow, without him being aware of it until now. Draco fell back a step so he could feel Harry's warmth there, and took a deep breath.  
  
"I think--I think it's the thing from the case they call the Sussex Necromancer case," Draco whispered. "They wouldn't call it that if they knew everything we knew. But I was ordered never to talk about it." He knew that was the reason Harry had never asked him what it was like, his last case as a regular Auror. Sealing the entire case under orders, the way the Ministry had, was almost never done, and one would be thrown out of the Aurors if one was found talking about it. No pauses, no exceptions.  
  
"Then we'll see it now, and I can share it with you that way," Harry said, and his hand tightened on Draco's arm.  
  
Draco felt grateful for one mad moment that he had a Gryffindor lover, who would consider the terrifying thing about to happen to them in the light of a  _bonding_ experience.  
  
Then the shadows parted, and the thing came out to stand before Draco, moving on hunched legs like a spider's, the way it had come out of the shadows a few moments before Kellen had died.  
  
The hunched legs were things Draco could have dealt with. And even the round head, and the long, flexible neck, and the way the claws tapped on the floor. He had battled worse beings before that Dark wizards had invented, or bred from magical creatures and set to guarding their domains.  
  
But this thing had dark eyes, huge eyes, liquid eyes, that locked onto his, and his soul began to change and drift. Memories that were not his own slanted through him like falling stars, and Draco could see paths of the future, tangled possibilities that represented roads he had chosen not to walk. In the half-world created by the creature, he was Voldemort's torturer, and loved it. He had never met Harry. He was a Hufflepuff and disowned by his parents when he turned eleven. No choices he had made mattered.  
  
This creature could rewrite the past inside a head. This creature could change souls. Most of the people Draco and Kellen had met on the Sussex Necromancer case had become its victims, and either killed themselves or died at the hands of terrified friends who had not known what they were becoming.  
  
Harry was the one who broke Draco free of the change that was happening to him. He shouted and cast a curse, and the creature gibbered and lurched backwards, turning its faceted eyes on him.  
  
Harry might have been caught in that gaze if he'd stood still, but he had more sense than Draco, who had confronted the thing twice and  _still_ looked into its eyes. He grabbed Draco's hand and ducked behind a pile of stone knocked loose by the writhing tentacles instead, and Draco heard the clicking and tapping as the creature came after them.  
  
Then Warren and Jenkins spoke at the same time, words Draco couldn't make out with the way his head was still ringing, and the creature screamed. And screamed. And screamed. The echoes of that cry were clanging through Draco's head even as he twisted out from behind the loose stone to go back to the battle.  
  
The creature lay still on the stone, its eyes burned away. Draco swallowed. He knew the body would have vanished if he had been the one to break the curse, the way both Harry and Jenkins had been with their fears.  
  
Instead, it remained, the way the tentacles around them did, and Draco found it hard to meet Harry's gaze when Harry turned and looked at him.  
  
Harry touched his chin, then bent down and kissed him. Draco knew Jenkins and Warren would be gaping. He couldn't care, though. Not when Harry's hands and Harry's lips felt so good, and Harry still touched him and held him and reassured him.  
  
"That's the most terrifying thing I've ever seen," Harry said solemnly. "I wouldn't have wanted to face it a second time, either."  
  
He looked at Draco, waiting, but Draco smiled at him and shook his head. He still couldn't talk about how he had defeated the thing, since that was sealed under the Ministry's orders. If he could have showed Harry, he would have. Harry understood without speech, likely, and squeezed his hand before letting go.  
  
"I think the combination of Ernhardt and our former colleague should logically be the most terrifying thing you've ever seen," Jenkins murmured, as if idly, scanning the walls and floors of the room. "Not that I want to tell you how to ration your fear, of course, Auror Potter."  
  
Draco opened his mouth to retort, but Warren shouted from another room before he could. Jenkins darted in that direction. Draco followed, smirking. If Jenkins teased him too much about his greatest fear, he would be more than happy to glance back and forth from her to her partner.  
  
Warren stood in front of a stone panel that looked as if a protective ward on it had been broken by the thrashing tentacles, or perhaps the final defeat of the curse. She turned to all three of them and nodded. "A map," she said.  
  
Draco held up his wand and stared at it in the light of the  _Lumos_ Charm; Warren's sunshine spell was beginning to fade at last.  
  
The scratched lines meant nothing to him at first, but then Harry made a muffled exclamation and unfolded the paper they had taken from Ernhardt's house, enlarging it with a murmured spell and tacking it to the wall beside the lines Warren had discovered with a Sticking Charm as it stretched.  
  
And there was, after all, a map of Britain, and in two corners were tiny dark blobs that were shaped like spirals when Draco looked at them more closely. One was clearly Cuthbert's Corner, where they now stood.  
  
The other was in Scotland, and as Draco stared, he was sure he knew where, even before Jenkins stabbed her finger out and caught the markings under it.  
  
"The Fobidden Forest," she breathed.


	8. A Refreshing Interlude

"We know little more about Ernhardt than we did when we went to Cuthbert's Corner."  
  
Draco, watching from the corner of his eye for dark dogs, only nodded when Jenkins came up to him. She had started the conversation, and her words made no sense to him; to him, they had learned a good deal about Ernhardt's goals and the directions he would probably take next. So he waited for her to make sense, and watched the trail in front of them in the meanwhile.  
  
"We do not know what he wanted when he was there. We do not know why he set the traps that he did when he had no grand secrets to protect. We do not know what he might have done with the people he captured."  
  
Draco grimaced. This was the part, he supposed, where he apologized for keeping what he thought he'd discovered in the Potions lab secret. Harry hadn't said anything, either, and that left Jenkins and Warren with nothing more than the conviction that Ernhardt was a sadist, given the skeleton in chains.  
  
But Draco had never been good at apologizing, so he preferred to skip the whole tedious business and go straight to the giving of information. "I think that he was drinking the blood of twisted. Either that, or feeding them his blood."  
  
Jenkins stopped walking. Warren and Harry were behind her, and they sped up a little. Draco turned around to face her. Jenkins had drawn her wand, and while she had it lowered at the moment, Draco had already seen how fast that could change.  
  
"Why would he wish to do anything so useless?" Jenkins shook her head. "Note that I do not comment on the madness of his plans. He is twisted, and madness can be assumed. But what good would taking blood do?"  
  
"Twisted can be infected or created by drinking the blood of other twisted," Harry said, taking the plunge and moving around both of their temporary partners to stand beside Draco. "We discovered that fact in an earlier case of ours."  
  
"You didn't think to share it." Jenkins shifted a step towards them, but it was the sort of sideways step that someone would take in battle.  
  
"You still don't entirely trust us," Harry said. "And when have we  _ever_ talked about our cases before this? I only know one time you even worked with Draco, and that was during the Larkin case when I was in hospital. You haven't worked with me. You leaped to the conclusion that I must have killed your partner earlier today. Tell me what in those facts would make us trust you."  
  
"This is  _important_ ," Warren said, coming up beside Jenkins and laying a hand on her arm. Harry didn't think it would calm her down so much as hold her back temporarily. "You do not know how important."  
  
"Because of Ernhardt?" Draco felt confident to speak again, although it meant both of them were suddenly paying attention to him.  
  
"Because of the honor of our Corps," Jenkins said. "And the way that the rest of the Aurors will treat all of us if he survives and goes free."  
  
"You said other things mattered more than that when you were proposing to work with us." Harry shook his head. "We think Ernhardt was collecting the blood of the twisted, maybe drinking it because he wanted to see if he could acquire their gifts that way. It probably wouldn't work because he was already twisted. But he might also have fed them  _his_ blood. Maybe that would create an army of people whose bodies he could leap into, later."  
  
Warren stiffened. Jenkins gave a sharp bark of something that was not laughter. "If it wouldn't work one way, it shouldn't work the other way."  
  
"This is a new branch of magic, for all purposes," Draco said, and shrugged with one shoulder. "The Ministry only recently defined and identified twisted. This could have happened for years, but without the proper framework to understand it, no one knew what was happening."  
  
"We have agreed that the Ministry's definition of twisted needs some work," Warren began, in the same condescending tone that she would have used if they were  _arguing_ for the Ministry's definition.  
  
"Yes," Draco said. "But we still use it for now. We're still using it to understand what happened with Ernhardt and the kind of opponent we're facing." He spoke in the eminently polite and reasonable tone that Professor McGonagall had used to speak to his mother when she went to Hogwarts to complain about Draco's marks in Transfiguration, and saw that it was having much the same effect on Warren that it had on his mother. Her eyebrows drew down, her shoulders hunching as if she was about to take flight. And yet, Draco had said nothing that she could actually object to. Draco smiled at her and continued, "This is what happened to at least one twisted in the past we know of, infection by drinking someone else's blood. We need to take the possibility seriously."  
  
Jenkins opened her mouth. Draco leaned forwards slightly, interested to see what side she would come down on. She had been practical in the recent past, but she tended to side with her partner.  
  
Then the air around them ignited, and flat, crushed rats poured out of it, running towards them on legs that rocked and wobbled, writhing with what Draco thought at first were tentacles and then realized were giant maggots. Their mouths were open, their carrion-scented breath washing into the air. Their squeaks were high enough to hurt Draco's ears.  
  
Draco whirled to the side, and saw Warren and Jenkins take up a similar position at the same moment as he felt Harry's back bump solidly against his.  _I reckon Ernhardt didn't leave the outside of his house undefended after all._  
  
*  
  
Harry remembered the way the last rat had exploded, the one they found in the house Ernhardt had been using while he was Head Auror, and the first thing he did was fling up a shield. Then he studied the rats more closely. Where had they come from, and why had they appeared now, of all times?  
  
The lead rat reared up on its hind legs and moved its front paws in odd, ritualistic patterns, as if beckoning the others forwards. After a moment, Harry realized that was, in fact, what was happening. The other rats separated into wings as the lead rat's legs separated, and moved off in the directions that its maggots pointed.  
  
 _Once you get past the grossness of it all, it's actually rather clever._  
  
Obviously, the lead rat should be the first one to go, but Harry's own shield was preventing him from getting off a curse that way. He tensed, counting, and readying the curse on his tongue, watching the lead rat all the while, to make sure it wasn't suddenly going to drop to all fours and dart off in a different direction.   
  
But the rat remained where it was, and from the waves of curses that spread out from Jenkins's and Warren's wands, destroying other individuals, it seemed neither of them had noticed. Harry reached back, touched Draco's shoulder, and nodded.  
  
Draco followed his gaze and understood at once. He raised a covering fire of hexes that made the rats have to divide or be speared and chopped by the blades and axes that appeared from thin air, while Harry dropped the shield for a moment and aimed straight at the lead rat.  
  
Of course, that was the moment when the other rats began to explode, but Harry had his focus now. He ignored the slimy feeling of half-rotted flesh covering him, and his curse hit the leader.  
  
The leader, turning to multicolored dust, made an attempt to run after all, but its maggots had already crumbled, and its body did the same thing a moment later. The rats promptly spread out in all directions, some trying to escape, some attacking each other.  
  
Warren and Jenkins finished them off in seconds. Draco shook Harry's hand, grinned, and turned to face the other Aurors--probably to carry on their conversation as if nothing had happened, Harry knew. Draco liked gestures like that.  
  
But Warren started a new conversation before Draco could. "What was that?" she demanded, frowning at Harry. "How did you know which rat to strike?"  
  
"It was obvious which one led them, when you started looking." Harry kept his voice down. "It pointed them certain ways. They traveled those ways. It wasn't hard, and it wasn't Dark, and my mind hasn't been invaded by Ernhardt, if that's what you're implying."  
  
Jenkins and Warren exchanged one of those glances that Harry found exasperating, because he couldn't read it. On the other hand, he reckoned that he and Draco probably looked as exasperating from the outside. He kept his mouth shut, and finally Jenkins said, "I would not have implied so."  
  
"Don't let your partner imply it, then," Draco said smartly, and turned away. "Are we going to the Forbidden Forest? Or are we going to stand here and let Ernhardt strike at us again?"  
  
"Neither, right away," Jenkins said. "We need time to rest and recover from what happened here, and we should make a vague interim report to the Ministry so that they will not try to assign us other cases in the meantime."  
  
"More urgent for you than for us," Draco said. "After all, you might have other cases to work, while it's considered that we deserve this shit assignment for letting everything in the Head Auror's office go to shit."  
  
"You still need time to rest," said Warren. "Neither of you are at full strength after the spells you performed--although still impressive," she added, nodding at Harry as if that compliment could make up for her doubt about his motives.  
  
 _Maybe it does._ Harry found that he didn't really want to argue anything like that. He shrugged a little and said, "Yes, I could do with a night's sleep in my own bed and fresh plans in the morning."  
  
Draco frowned at him. Harry met his eyes, and let him see the weariness he would have kept carefully concealed from Warren and Jenkins if this were any other set of circumstances. Draco sighed and nodded. "Let's go, then."  
  
 _He's more like me than he knows,_ Harry thought as they Apparated.  _He'll do things for the sake of his partner that he won't do for himself._  
  
But bringing it up right now would only start another argument that Harry didn't want to have, so he waited until they had worked through the wards around his home and were in the middle of the drawing room. Then he sighed and turned to Draco. "What do you need more right now, food or rest?"  
  
"A shower," Draco said, wrinkling his nose at the rat flesh drying on his sleeve. "And you're sharing it with me."  
  
Harry smiled. Although he felt a lot like one of Macgeorge's zombies himself, he was sure the shower would refresh him. "What did you have in mind?"  
  
*  
  
Draco closed his eyes for a long moment, slumping against the wall as Harry's hands moved gently over his back, digging into the tense muscles, lingering on his arse as if Harry were imagining all the many, many things he could do with it. Then they moved on, and Draco sighed as Harry washed his hair, dragging out the strands, massaging shampoo into them the way he'd massaged soap into Draco's skin.  
  
Cuthbert's Corner had been harder to survive than Draco had reckoned on.  
  
 _And this sort of challenge will repeat, again and again, until we face down Ernhardt and destroy him, or break.  
  
_ But Draco didn't want to think about that right now. He turned around and kissed Harry instead, ignoring Harry's incoherent protest that he hadn't been finished shampooing Draco's hair. They could do that later. They could do lots of things later.  
  
Right now, they had being alive to celebrate.  
  
Draco forced Harry back a step, then two. Harry went, but with his hands still tangled in Draco's hair, so that it wasn't as easy to pull away and kneel down to take Harry in his mouth as Draco had imagined it would be. He pulled back and glared a little, with eyes that he knew were probably blurry and so not very impressive, in Harry's direction.  
  
Harry hummed under his breath and kissed him again, then tugged at Draco and pulled them both down onto the floor of the shower. "Like  _this_ ," he said, and spun them both around. Suddenly Draco found Harry between  _his_ thighs, and his head between Harry's, his chin bumping against Harry's cock.  
  
And a soft, warm mouth fastening itself around him.  
  
Draco groaned and rearranged Harry a bit, spreading his legs, ignoring the way the hard title of the shower pressed into his own shoulders and hips. In a very short time, that wouldn't matter a bit, and he could enjoy himself right now. His tongue flicked out and caught Harry's tip, and Harry started and became a little less than perfect in the way he was sucking Draco off.  
  
 _As long as that's known,_ Draco thought smugly, and sucked and licked and caressed and tapped with his tongue until Harry's breath was ragged and he only managed to do the same to Draco every few seconds.  
  
It went on, the heated and misty air of the shower blending with the hard tile blending with the warmth around him blending with the warmth he was giving, and Draco came in a way that made him feel as though someone had tossed him up in the air and then thrown him back down. He laid his head on the floor and panted for a moment.  
  
Harry grunted and reached down towards himself. Draco blocked his hand with an easy stretch of his own fingers. Harry glared at him, his face blurred.  
  
Draco did no more than stick out his tongue and touch Harry with it once, in exactly the right place. Harry arched his back and grunted again, and that was the end. Draco watched him splash on the floor of the shower with a satisfaction that eased whatever aches and pains still remained to him.  
  
Harry recovered in a few quick, panting moments, and then reached up to shut off the shower. Draco groaned in protest. He would have raised his wand to turn the water back on, but his head was spinning, and he didn't actually know where his wand was right now. His hands tingled.  
  
"We'll be better off resting in a bed," Harry said, and hauled at Draco with what he thought was unwarranted harshness. Draco managed to stumble to his feet, and then stumble out of the shower, and then into a towel, and then into bed.  
  
It was soft, yes, and large enough, but not  _warm_ enough. Draco took some pleasure in reaching up to Harry's shoulders and pulling him into the bed after him. Harry landed with another grunt. This time, it was probably because Draco had driven the air out of him rather than the pleasure, but Draco didn't much care.   
  
"Stay with me," he whispered into Harry's ear.  
  
"I will," Harry said.   
  
Draco didn't need stronger words. He closed his eyes and drifted off into sleep that felt all the thicker and better for the partner that curled strongly around him, and snored into his ear when he woke up.  
  
*  
  
"I suppose you're going to tell me why you should be allowed to continue this case when it seems to have involved nothing so far but danger to some of our best Aurors."  
  
The Auror hierarchy was currently engaged in a game of pass-the-responsibility, Harry thought, eyeing the woman they'd deputed to deal with him and Draco this morning. She was Auror Helen Melgaden, senior enough, and severe enough, with her blond hair pulled back as though she hated its existence and didn't want to be reminded of it by a stray strand any time during the day. But she wasn't Okazes, or any of the immediate adjuncts to the Head Auror who would have dealt with them before.  
  
Of course, since that Head Auror had turned out to be Ernhardt, Harry thought that perhaps the Auror hierarchy was just as anxious not to bring him and Draco near anyone else.  
  
"We should be allowed to continue it because we've found the place where Ernhardt might have gone." Harry had agreed to sit back and let Draco handle this case because that was the way they worked best in the face of opposition, and he thought now that the decision had been a good one. Draco's face was calm and grave, his tie straight, his Auror robes professional. He looked impeccable, and Harry didn't think  _he_ did. "A house in the Forbidden Forest."  
  
Melgaden sat up and looked back and forth between them. "And you discovered this by yourself?"  
  
"No, madam." Draco's eyes blinked wide open once, and then shut, as he shook his head slightly. "The other two Socrates Aurors, Thomasina Warren and Simone Jenkins, also helped us."  
  
"There are  _four_ other Socrates Aurors," Melgaden corrected him sharply. "One of which is Isla Rudie, last partner of the woman you're hunting." Harry shifted in his seat, wondering if Melgaden was one of those who refused to believe that Ernhardt had really been a twisted and what his flaw was, but stopped when she looked at him. "One would think that you would rely on her for help, rather than pulling two senior Aurors off their cases."  
  
"Warren and Jenkins volunteered to help us." Harry raised his head a little when Melgaden glared at him, but, well, it was true. "And standard Auror procedure says that Rudie is too close to the possible death of her partner to be assigned to this case."  
  
Melgaden laughed in a nasty, open-mouthed way. "And you're going to start relying on standard Auror procedure to protect you  _now_?"  
  
"It still applies." Draco gave her a cold little smile. "If you think that we haven't followed it well enough up to this point, rather than being persecuted by a so-called Head Auror determined to destroy us, then you should encourage us to follow it the  _better_ , not remove us from the case."  
  
Melgaden didn't pinch her nose and look away in disgust, but Harry thought it was hard for her. "You are still pulling senior Aurors off cases."  
  
"And Rudie and her new partner don't have one?" Harry asked. "Or is it better somehow because they're less senior?"  
  
Melgaden stood up and walked around from behind her desk. Harry tensed, but Melgaden was gazing out the window and stood with her hands on her hips, as if the enchanted view before her would show her something or change without her prior approval.  
  
"You cause  _too much_ trouble," Melgaden said finally, and swung around. "We understand that Aurors can't always follow the more restrictive procedures in the field. We understand that your fame is a problem, and so is the recent death of your partner, Auror Potter. And yours, Auror Malfoy." She nodded at Draco just when Harry had been about to bristle that they needed to acknowledge him. "But you cause too much trouble and cost the Ministry too much time and money."  
  
Harry shrugged. "Some of what we've endured in the Socrates Corps is Ernhardt's fault."  
  
"Madam Melgaden." Draco leaned forwards in his chair just as Melgaden opened her mouth for what would probably be a lecture on Harry's faults. "I just wanted to know. Who informed you that we had taken Aurors Warren and Jenkins on the case, and that it was probably against their will?"  
  
Melgaden watched Draco, but either she found nothing to actually disapprove of in him beyond the fact that he was Harry's partner or his polished, politely interested exterior was too much for her. She grunted and sat down, drawing a file towards her. "Auror Elder. He's concerned about the probable effect on his partner."  
  
"What effect?" Harry asked. "Rudie wasn't  _there_ when--"  
  
Draco pressed on his arm with one hand, and Harry had the sense to shut up. Draco's silent pressure was right. They had already caused enough trouble for Rudie by tangling Macgeorge up in their last case.  
  
"The effect of knowing that all of you are out hunting the same target, her former  _partner_ if we believe your reports, and that there is no one to back her up on her current case." Melgaden rapped her fingers on the desk and looked back and forth between them.  
  
"She hasn't asked for help," Harry said. "She might not want us to help her even if she did want it from  _someone_. We're involved in the disappearance of her former partner. She's let us know that she does partially blame us."  
  
"Socrates Aurors are supposed to work together." Melgaden looked at him with eyes like a lizard's. "When four of them work together as a unit and exclude the other two, it naturally leads to certain uncomfortable feelings."  
  
"Since when are Socrates Aurors supposed to work together?" Draco asked suddenly. "That was never a regulation before. We were always sent out on individual cases by partner teams, and when we first joined the Corps, one of the Aurors there, Latham, didn't have a partner."  
  
"And he died on the Larkin case," Melgaden snapped. "You see how important it is to stay within reach of a partner."  
  
"Can you tell us  _when this new rule that we're supposed to help each other came into effect_?" Draco's voice cracked like a whip. "If you plan to tell us that it's new since the Head Auror was revealed to be twisted, that's fine, but you can't punish us for violation of a new rule introduced in the last fortnight."  
  
Melgaden wouldn't stop staring at Draco, but Harry thought the request a perfectly reasonable one. He said, "He's right. We were assigned cases as teams, but the only time that we worked together with the others before this was the Larkin case, and that happened partly because I was in hospital and Draco wasn't supposed to approach him alone."  
  
"You are banned from St. Mungo's," Melgaden said, transferring her frown to Harry.  
  
"At the time, I wasn't." Harry kept his voice and his face inflexible. "The banning happened as the result of my actions on the Larkin case."  
  
Melgaden spent some more time silent, then shrugged. "The Aurors are deciding that hunting twisted is much more dangerous work than they thought it was. That means that you must spend as much time with each other as possible."  
  
"If Aurors Rudie and Elder prefer to hunt on their own, no amount of offering them our aid is going to matter," Draco said.  
  
There came a knock on the office door, and Melgaden stood. "That would be why I asked them to meet us here," she said. "And they can accompany you to this famous house in the Forbidden Forest, if it exists."  
  
The look on Rudie's face when the door opened was bad enough, but the glances exchanged between Draco and Elder...  
  
Harry clenched his fists.  _I don't know if Elder wants to interfere on his own or if someone in the Ministry's hierarchy is doing this because they want good publicity. Or maybe it really is a conspiracy against us the way it was with Ernhardt, and they really do want us to die._  
  
Either way, I'm going to make sure Draco lives.


	9. This Is the Worst

"Auror Malfoy, are you  _sure_ that you should be taking the lead on this case? I understood that Aurors Jenkins and Warren were more experienced."  
  
Harry could see the muscle ticking in the side of Draco's jaw, and knew it would get worse before it got better. So he intervened, stepping between Elder and Draco and smiling as he said, "Why don't you get bent, Elder?"  
  
Warren and Jenkins both gave him sharp looks from over the copy of the map from Ernhardt's house that they'd made. Harry didn't care. If they wouldn't do anything about Elder's sniping, which could seriously hurt their team and thus get one of them hurt, then he would. There was no difference between what he was saying and what Elder was except that Harry’s voice was louder.  
  
"I thought Auror Malfoy could stand up for himself." Elder folded his hands in front of him like a priest, and smiled.  
  
"He doesn't have to," Harry said instantly. He'd spent a few hours the other day looking at old dueling codes, trying to find  _something_ that the Malfoys would accept in place of the destruction of Draco's soul. He learned useful information that way, at times. Not often, but days like this made up for the useless time. "He can appoint a champion to act on his behalf, to combat any accusation you make. Do you want to take  _me_ on in a duel, Elder?"  
  
Elder stared at him. Long and searchingly, as if he had no idea why Harry might want to step in the way of insults hurled at Draco. Then he shook his head. "My quarrel isn't with you, and you aren't the one who should suffer."  
  
" _No one_ should suffer," Rudie said, chopping the air between them with a swift hand. "The only one who should is Ernhardt. Shut up, Elder. We need to concentrate on the case." And she turned back to face the map.  
  
"You heard the lady," Harry said, and turned his back, crossing the open Socrates office to stand beside Draco. He put a hand on his shoulder and rubbed for a few seconds.  
  
Draco nodded once. The ticking muscle had calmed down. Now he looked as though this was a boring meeting and his mind had already moved on to what he would do next. Harry didn't like that look, but it was better than some of the others Draco might have had in Elder's presence, so Harry would put up with it.  
  
"We think Ernhardt has a house in the Forbidden Forest," Warren was saying when Harry paid attention again. "Or a sanctuary, at least, like the one we found at Cuthbert's Corner. We need to go there."  
  
"If he's not there?" Rudie trembled like light in water. Harry had to look closely to see that her fingers were closed on her wand, and that grip, at least, was absolutely steady.  
  
"Then we'll look for any clues he's left behind that might tell us where he's moved." Jenkins twisted her neck to look at her. "The same way we looked for clues to tell us what he intends at Cuthbert's Corner."  
  
"But Aurors Potter and Malfoy participated in that expedition," Elder said. "And we know that Auror Malfoy covers up what he shouldn't. Any evidence you might have uncovered from there is tainted."  
  
Harry really would have drawn his wand, but Rudie said, in the kind of tone someone wouldn't contradict, "Shut  _up_ , Elder. If these people can lead me to Nicolette and help me in setting her free, I don't care what else they do. If they can't, then I'll strike out on my own and find her. Either way, you aren't helping."  
  
"Yes, you aren't helping," Jenkins said, exactly as if she hadn't spent an entire afternoon expressing doubts about Draco and Harry, too. "We need to trust and rely on each other to survive Ernhardt."  
  
"But how can you trust someone who's a Dark wizard?"  
  
"Do you know what?" Harry asked Warren's back. "I used Unforgivable Curses during the war. I cursed someone just for insulting a person I liked. I went into the woods to die when there were probably easier ways to do it. I defeated the Darkest wizard in history with a lucky coincidence, and I've lived through cases that I couldn't have lived through without using Darker magic. So I'm the same as him, Elder, and you should arrest me, too."  
  
Elder turned to him. His smile had vanished, leaving his face looking pale and unprotected. "But you're  _Harry Potter,_ " he said, as though that excused him.  
  
"What does that matter?" Harry demanded.  
  
"You can't be tainted in your soul," Elder said simply. "Your partner could, though, and he could have fooled you. Your innate good nature means that you wouldn't recognize the deceptions he presented to you."  
  
A little silence settled over the Socrates office. Harry knew that Rudie hadn't paid any attention, and Draco still stared off to the side as though nothing concerned him more than the construction of the office walls, but Warren, Jenkins, and Harry stood together, looking at Elder, and Harry wasn't sure which of them would curse him first.  
  
"You're the one who's misunderstood," Warren said at last. "Anyone can be fooled, but an Auror can also use Dark magic to survive an investigation. You'll find, Auror Elder, that working in the Socrates Corps is different from working with Lucretius or Aristotle or wherever you were before. We hunt the Darkest wizards alive. We kill them more than we capture them. There is no room for untainted goodness in a Corps like that. And Harry Potter is one of the most successful Socrates Aurors since the Corps began."  
  
Elder blinked at her like a turtle coming from out of its shell. "Do you mean that Auror Malfoy has fooled you, too? I had no idea. I think--I think that I'll have to be very careful to guard Isla's back when we go into this house."  
  
Jenkins turned her wand over in her hand. Warren smiled at her, and Harry felt a vast ripple of silent communication pass between them. He had no idea what it meant, but it comforted him all the same. He knew Jenkins and Warren would act together, if necessary, to prevent Elder from being worse than annoying.  
  
"We're going to discuss other things now," Jenkins said, very softly and very clearly. "Not your obsessions, Auror Elder. Don't try to steer the conversation around to them again, or we shall be...displeased. Do you understand?"  
  
Elder was quiet, but Harry didn't think he did. He was obsessed with Draco being evil and tricking everyone, and now he shifted his shoulders back and forth, glancing from face to face. Harry had seen that look in the mirror more times than he wanted to count. He shuddered a little and turned back to Rudie.  
  
"I know one part of the Forbidden Forest well enough to Apparate to it," Rudie was saying. "Nicolette and I conducted a search for lost artifacts there. It's here." Her finger fell on what, as far as Harry could tell, was a meaningless area of forest, but not far from Ernhardt's house. "We should begin there."  
  
"If she was on the case, Ernhardt can touch her memories," Draco said, speaking for the first time in the conversation. "He might have baited the area with traps."  
  
"We're six fully armed Aurors," Rudie said, turning around to stare at him. "If we can't evade traps like that, then no one can."  
  
Her hand was on her wand again, her eyes wide and clear, and Harry knew a different kind of shiver than the one Elder had provoked. She really  _was_ going to follow her lost partner anywhere, and give her peace by her own measure, and no one would stop her. Probably the best they could do was keep Rudie from getting herself killed in the process.  
  
"I agree," Warren said, and rolled up the map with a little nod. "We should go while the news that we're all working together hasn't spread around the Ministry yet."  
  
"But why do you fear the Ministry knowing what we're doing?" Elder asked. "If it's legitimate, no one would try to stop us, and if it isn't, then it's their  _duty_ to stop us."  
  
Warren and Jenkins exchanged another of those glances. Harry understood the feeling. He wanted to strangle Elder, or shake him, or wave his hand up and down in front of his eyes.  
  
It didn't make sense that someone like Elder would have "earned" an assignment to Socrates Corps in the usual way, by being on a case involving a twisted and probably learning dangerous secrets that the Ministry wanted to keep them from blurting out. It made more and more sense to think someone had assigned him there to stop Draco.  
  
 _And we have to find out who, in addition to everything else._  
  
If it hadn't been for the solid, warm stance of Draco at his side, Harry thought he might have collapsed in exhaustion. But partnered Aurors didn't do that, and when Warren walked out the door, they all followed, Harry making sure to stay between Draco and Elder at all times.  
  
*  
  
Draco wanted to kill Elder.  
  
It was a quiet, cold knowing, a desire that slithered through his brain and into the back of his mind and lay there waiting for him to notice it. He didn't know how to talk to Harry about it. Harry might say he understood, but Draco didn't know if Harry had ever felt rage like this, this deep, this persistent.  
  
Elder believed what he was saying. He thought Draco was lying to everyone, and he would probably try to prevent Draco from casting any spell he considered Dark. On this case, it could be fatal.  
  
It could be fatal to  _Harry_.  
  
Draco walked with his muscles relaxed on the surface but tensed underneath, adrenaline whispering and then roaring in his ears. He could draw his wand and kill Elder before anything happened. It would make his allies abandon him--except for Rudie, who probably wouldn't care, and for Harry, who would linger to ask him why--but at the moment, he thought that a small price to pay for guarding his partner and his own life.  
  
Elder was trailing him, so close to Draco as they walked through the Ministry corridors that Draco could feel his breath. He stopped once and stepped back as a high-ranking secretary crossed their path, so that Elder had to scramble and almost hit a wall. When they started walking again, though, he was right back in the same place, and Draco knew that he would ignore the rebuffs and insults. Someone like Elder, with a sincere belief in Light and Dark magic and the need to arrest wizards who practiced Dark Arts, would always keep coming back, as stubborn as a mosquito.  
  
Yes, Draco wanted to kill him. And if he had a chance during the investigation and thought no one would suspect him, he would do it in a heartbeat.  
  
Harry stood shoulder-to-shoulder with him as they made their way to a hidden Apparition point and Rudie told them the coordinates she'd memorized. He knew something was wrong, Draco thought, but not what.  
  
He didn't have the words to tell him. He leaned on Harry instead, briefly, as Harry reached out to Side-Along Apparate him. He didn't dare stay leaning for long. Jenkins and Warren would think him weak. Elder would decide that it was part of a plot and bring it to everyone's attention.  
  
From the way Harry briefly squeezed his arm, at least one person saw, and knew, and understood.  
  
*  
  
The clearing Rudie had described to them was a dim one, hidden from the sun by the thick branches arching overhead. Those branches were mostly dead, without leaves, but it didn't matter; they were in the middle of a thicket, and anything could be hiding here. Harry drew his wand openly a second after he and Draco landed from the Apparition.  
  
Elder came out of it with Rudie and pointed a finger at them. "What do you think you're doing, Auror Potter? Do you see any  _enemies_ here yet?"  
  
“They might be all around us, and we wouldn’t see them,” Harry said calmly, and kept his wand out. He turned to scan the trees, moving in a complete circle that kept his body between Elder and Draco at all times. Draco kept silent, which Harry knew meant he didn’t object, and since only Draco’s opinions were important… “Who’s taking the lead here?” He glanced from Rudie, who had chosen the Apparition point, to Warren, who had mastered the map.  
  
Warren looked at Rudie for a moment, too, but Rudie directed a burning gaze into the depths of the forest as if she would sear away all the trees that stood between her and her former partner, and said nothing. Warren sighed and took a step forwards. “I will.”  
  
Jenkins moved to back her up. Harry watched her watching him. She smiled when she caught his eye, and tilted her head at the wand.  
  
“Personally, I think an open threat is  _always_ a good idea,” she said. “It’s the only language that some of the creatures here understand.”  
  
 _Oh, good. We have her tacit approval, then._ Harry wasn’t sure that the tacit approval of someone like Simone Jenkins was always a good thing, but he trusted her more than Elder. “Too many of them,” he said to her, with a grave nod, and as she fell in behind Warren, he fell in behind her. Draco was right beside him, obviously and pricklingly unhappy about turning his back on Elder. Harry turned and dropped back a few steps to shield him.  
  
“You don’t have to do that.”  
  
Elder was loud enough to scare birds away in a dozen directions. Harry saw Jenkins’s head tilt, listening. He hissed under his breath. Since Harry had made dealing with Elder his business, that meant Jenkins wouldn’t interfere unless Harry proved he couldn’t handle him.  
  
“Keep my wand out?” Harry smiled at him, and wondered what it looked like when Elder gave him a wounded look. Defensive, maybe. Elder understood so little that almost anything would make him react with those doe-eyes. “Auror Jenkins just explained why it was a good idea.”  
  
“You’re keeping it out to defend against me. I’m not going to do anything except prove to you why Auror Malfoy is untrustworthy.” Elder folded his arms, nodding to himself. “And I think you’d be grateful to be proven wrong.”  
  
Harry thought about all the times that other Aurors had accused him of being unsubtle and not understanding politics, and wished that they could be here now, so they could apologize to him. “Why grateful?”  
  
“Because it would mean that you were nurturing a serpent in your bosom, and you could cast it out.”  
  
“Were you raised by Muggles?” Harry asked. He couldn’t think of a polite way to ask what he needed to know, but then, screw being polite when Elder was involved.  
  
“No. Why do you ask?” Elder pranced along now, his gaze on Harry instead of any of the trees or shadows. If he’d had a tail, it would have been wagging.  
  
“Because that sounded like a Muggle quotation,” Harry said. “From a book called the Bible.”  
  
“I’ve heard of it, of course,” Elder offered. “In Muggle Studies. Which is a subject I think any well-educated wizard should take, and—”  
  
“You need to be  _quiet_ ,” Jenkins said, appearing out of nowhere right beside them. Harry was glad that Elder’s jump and startled flinch likely hid his own reaction. “You don’t want to alert Ernhardt before we get close to him, and I don’t care about your grudge against Auror Malfoy. Ernhardt is more dangerous.”  
  
She melted away again, and Elder turned back to Harry with a faint frown. “Are you sure that we can trust  _her_?”  
  
“I tried to tell you before,” Harry said. “All of us have used Dark magic. All of us are committed to this hunt, and when we get there, we’re going to kill Ernhardt.” He’d thought of trying to soften the blow, but again, politeness was useless with Elder.  
  
“You can’t.”  
  
Elder turned away from him, then, and walked towards the front to catch up with Rudie, and Harry could relax and go back to watching out for the threats that would only try to kill them, instead of trying to  _get_ them killed.  
  
“Do you think Ernhardt assigned him to us from beyond the Department so we would die?” Draco murmured. “Or are people who worked for him and are still influenced by his agenda behind it?”  
  
Harry laughed aloud, then muffled it to a cough as Jenkins appeared from the shadows, glared at him, and melted away again. “I don’t think either,” he said at last. “It could be a coincidence. Or it could be that wherever he worked before, the people who had to work beside him were so fed up with him that they jumped at the chance to send him to another Corps.”  
  
“I wish we could know which.”  
  
Harry found and squeezed Draco’s hand. “I know.” Elder didn’t seem competent enough to be an Auror, but then, Harry knew people who would say the same of him. It could be difficult to know what an Auror’s best skills were when you were watching from the outside.   
  
He and Draco walked the rest of the way in silence, and the others did the same, though Harry heard Elder try to start a conversation several times. He fell quiet each time, though. Speaking to Rudie’s burning purpose was just intimidating enough, Harry supposed.  
  
*  
  
Draco paused and lifted his head. Part of it was the nagging itch in his left arm, but the rest of it was just general sensitivity. They were entering a part of the Forest where powerful Dark spells had been used, and recently.  
  
Elder was silent up ahead. Draco hoped that those spells included one to make a stupid man wake up and pay attention, but he doubted it. He bowed his head and whispered in Harry’s ear, not wanting to make more noise than he could help.  
  
“I think we’re drawing near the center of a recent ritual. That’s what it feels like. If I’m right and Ernhardt fed his blood to other twisted to make them his slaves, he might have started to draw them together.”  
  
“As Jenkins would say, we have no idea if that would work,” Harry muttered, but his voice was a gentle buzz, and his hand squeezed Draco’s.  
  
“With Ernhardt, the worst thing we can imagine is generally true,” Draco pointed out. “So we’ll have to make preparations to deal with it.”  
  
Harry took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. “Right. So what should we do?”  
  
“Prepare to kill anyone we find there,” Draco said. “I don’t think we can let Rudie have her revenge, and we can’t pause to let Elder decide that it would be better to arrest everyone. If Ernhardt has an army of slaves, he can send them after us, and if we leave one person alive, he can escape in their body.”  
  
Harry was silent again as they walked over leaves and through dells. Draco winced from the amount of noise they were making, but they couldn’t make less without lighting brighter lights than the  _Lumos_ Charms on their wands, and he thought that would be an even worse idea.  
  
Then Harry said, “But he could switch from body to body during the battle, and then flee anyway. I don’t want to slaughter a bunch of idiots. There has to be a way to trap him inside Macgeorge’s body and keep him there.”  
  
“What is it, then?” Draco snapped. “Because we tried our best when we confronted him in the Head Auror’s office, and you know that didn’t do a bloody bit of good.”  
  
“There has to be something we can do other than mass murder.”  
  
Draco frowned fiercely in front of him, at the shadows that darted under their feet, at the Dark magic that was drawing closer and closer to them. “If you’re about to begin another prattle about how this means that the twisted are misunderstood and not evil and don’t deserve to be killed…”  
  
“Not precisely that,” Harry said. “But if there are other people there, how can we know they’re twisted? Or innocent victims that Ernhardt possessed and pulled here? We can’t. If we murder the innocent, then we really are no better than him.”  
  
Draco groaned silently. He should have known that now was the time Harry’s conscience would pick to reappear, when they were approaching what could be the most dangerous battle of their time in the Socrates Corps. “Don’t start comparing yourself to him. The lives he’s destroyed and the people he’s killed are far worse than anything you could do.”  
  
“Or you?”  
  
Draco winced. “I’m thinking of something higher than that,” he said. “Of the damage those twisted could do if they  _are_ Ernhardt’s slaves and we allow them to escape. Didn’t you say once that Dumbledore fought for the greater good?”  
  
“Yes, and he used me as a tool to do it,” Harry said, his voice empty. “Would  _we_ be using their deaths?”  
  
Draco shook his head and didn’t say anything more. It seemed that things would have to fall out as they had before, when they had confronted individual twisted on their cases. Eventually, one of them would try to kill him or Harry, and Harry would strike back in self-defense before he thought about it.  
  
The corridor of trees narrowed in front of them, and then widened out. It didn’t take Rudie’s hiss to tell Draco that that wasn’t natural. Warren slowed, and Jenkins with her, but all of them could still see into the “clearing” formed by the pulling back of the trees.  
  
 _And I thought the rotted hippogriff at Cuthbert’s Corner was bad._  
  
Bones lay everywhere on the ground, carpeting it so thickly that Draco knew they would find no normal soil if they tried to walk here. Flesh hung in shining curtains from the trees, turning towards them as if sensing their presence. Red and white gleamed starkly, and purple, the color of exposed muscle. Draco swallowed as the smell hit him. He thought he could see blood running on the ground, but it was hard to make it out between everything else.  
  
“He couldn’t have built this,” Warren said, her voice breaking some of the sick enchantment that held them at the edge of the clearing. “It isn’t his flaw.”  
  
“But it is Nicolette’s.” Rudie was standing tall, staring through the clearing at something else. “She always said that she knew more about necromancy than anyone had before. I think she was right.”  
  
Draco followed her gaze. There was a house there, yes. For a moment, he wondered if it was made of bones, or if Ernhardt had simply turned the stone walls into bone. It possibly wasn’t beyond Macgeorge’s skill.  
  
Then he realized that the entire building had the appearance of a giant skull, and swallowed.  
  
“Come on,” Rudie said, and set out to cross the shifting ground.  
  
Draco felt Harry’s presence at his side, quiet and warm and solid and alive, and determined that they both remain so.   
  
It was the only thing that gave him the courage to take the first step.


	10. Walls of Flesh

The bones almost turned beneath their feet several times, but they made it to the house without a broken ankle or leg among the lot of Aurors. Harry had to admit he was almost sorry for that. If Elder had broken a leg, it could have been the perfect excuse to leave him behind, or at least have Rudie Apparate him out.  
  
But no, instead they arrived at the skull-house, and Warren reached out and traced one of her more complicated-looking spells in the air with her lips barely moving and eyes shut. When she opened them again, she looked bleaker than Harry had seen her at any time in Cuthbert’s Corner.  
  
“He’s put spells on the threshold that will trigger as soon as we cross it,” she said. “But I don’t know what kind they are. I can’t figure out their effect,” she added, probably because she had seen Harry’s mouth opening.  
  
“Then we should do the stone test,” Jenkins said, and stooped down to scoop up a stone before Harry could ask her what she meant.  
  
The stone arched up from her hand, and came down in the middle of the threshold. Immediately, burning and deafening light burst in the darkness of the clearing like a storm.  
  
Harry flinched back, his arms rising despite himself, to hold back the blinding effects of that light, the concussion of the thunder. Draco touched his shoulder, and Harry lowered them again. Yes, this wasn’t dangerous, only unexpected. The consequences of the spells might be, though, and Harry needed his eyes and hands free to defend against them.  
  
“It looks like it would have fried anyone who crossed,” Jenkins said, and nodded her chin at the blackened, wobbling, and considerably smaller stone. “Are there any still left?”  
  
Again Warren performed her detection spell that Harry didn’t recognize, and this time she grunted and nodded. “Yes. There’s at least one ward that I don’t know, and it looks like a new layer of defensive spells under the first.”  
  
“Are they necromantic?”  
  
It took Harry, and probably the others, too, a moment to realize that Rudie had spoken, her voice was so soft and hoarse. Warren turned to look at her with a pitying expression that Harry wanted to tell her to drop. Rudie would never put up with pity. But Rudie might not have noticed, from the way she was staring at the house.  
  
“I don’t know,” Warren said. “For a variety of good reasons, I’m unfamiliar with necromancy and the way it feels.”  
  
“Nicolette was exercising her flaw when she investigated necromancy,” Rudie said to no one as she took a slow step towards the house’s door. She reached out and ran her hands up and down in the air in front of the house, as though that would tell her as much as Warren’s wand told Warren. “And you’ve investigated and used your own flaws to survive. I don’t want to hear criticism of her on that front.”  
  
“You have a lot to learn about criticism,” Jenkins said, shaking her head.  
  
“This is what happens when you use Dark magic,” Elder said, looking from face to face as though he wanted someone to notice him. Harry immediately turned his head away in case he inadvertently gave the idiot the audience he was looking for. “You turn evil and unable to trust the other people in your group.”  
  
Jenkins and Draco were considering Elder with identical expressions. Harry would have categorized Jenkins’s expression as plotting Elder’s murder, which meant…  
  
Harry swallowed. Draco could kill, of course, but Harry would prefer that he not have to kill a fellow Auror. The Ministry would forgive many things, but not a murder, not like this, not now. He would have to preserve Draco’s soul as well as his life, it seemed.  
  
Harry shifted a little to the side, and Draco focused on him instead. Harry smiled at him and shook his head. Draco raised his eyebrows, but smiled when Harry laid a hand on his shoulder, and then leaned against him. So that was all right.  
  
Elder opened his mouth to make some other stupid remark, doubtless, because what came out of his mouth that  _wasn’t_ stupid? But Rudie interrupted him by saying simply, “The wards are necromantic. Here.”  
  
There was a clicking, hissing sound that Harry could only characterize as Parseltongue in reverse, and then some of the tension Harry had sensed in the air fell away. He turned and saw that Rudie was moving calmly forwards, past the stone, as though no wards had ever barred their entrance at all. She paused inside the house and turned her head back towards them. “Well? Are you coming?”  
  
“Did you just use  _Dark_ magic, Isla?” Elder had the expression of someone gently chiding a child as he followed her. Harry rolled his eyes.  
  
“I just used what I remembered from Nicolette’s books,” Rudie said, and then put out a hand to the wall. She walked into the darkness that waited beyond like that, letting the wall guide her as the side of a labyrinth probably would.  
  
Harry didn’t miss the quick flick of Jenkins’s wand, or the way that Warren shut her mouth and gave a minute shake of her head. It seemed that Jenkins had wondered if they would need to put Rudie down, but Warren disapproved.  
  
 _You don’t know they were thinking that. And anyway, there’s no way that someone can become a twisted just from studying what another twisted was studying. Macgeorge’s flaw was necromancy. It was inherent. Rudie can’t become a necromancer the same way._  
  
But lurking in the back of Harry’s mind was the old definition of a twisted, the one that said someone could become that way from studying too much Dark magic. At least one twisted he and Draco had hunted, the first, Larkin, had indeed turned out that way. And how many nights had Rudie spent poring over Macgeorge’s books, looking for some clue as to how to rescue her partner?  
  
“Let’s go,” Draco said into his ear, and Harry realized they were in danger of being left behind. He sighed and stepped over the threshold.  
  
*  
  
Draco’s left arm was burning, and he had to work hard to keep his expression neutral. Look any other way, and he would probably get scolded by Elder, or at least someone might ask what the problem was. The only one Draco wanted to know was Harry, who was already moving close to him, and who would defend him without question.  
  
The wall beneath Draco’s touch was soft and yielding, rippling. He kept his hand on it as Rudie did anyway. He might lose his way in the house if he let it go, and that was intolerable, given the way the atmosphere bore down on him.  
  
The first corridor they’d entered led them straight ahead for longer than Draco would have thought it would, then abruptly bent to the side and twisted off into the distance. Draco halted and narrowed his eyes. He could see, he realized, and that wasn’t the combined effect of everyone’s  _Lumos_ Charms. He looked up.  
  
Large worms crawled slowly overhead, the light of their bodies blue-green and making the faces of his companions look like corpses. Draco looked away quickly. He didn’t want to know what they were feeding on.  
  
“This house was once alive.”  
  
Draco turned to watch Rudie. She was still in front, but she had come to a halt, and her head was tilted back, her nostrils working as though the foul miasma of odors rising up from the house was purest wine.  
  
“Once?” Warren asked. She stood between Rudie and Draco, against the wall. Her arms were tucked down, her voice calm, but Draco recognized the feel of an Auror ready to spring into battle. She would attack Rudie if she gave enough wrong answers, Draco was fairly certain.  
  
“Yes,” Rudie said, and smiled at Warren in a way that made Warren shake her head. “Not now, of course. Nicolette’s magic can’t work with things that are still alive. This house is a corpse, and—” She turned her head to the side, and abruptly she moved, her wand springing up in front of her, forsaking the light it had shed until that moment so that she could illuminate the corridor in front of them with a harsher glow.  
  
There were shapes there, vaguely human, moving towards them with squelching noises. Draco didn’t know why they hadn’t noticed them earlier, they were so noisy, but then, the darkness of the house was worse than was natural. Possibly it had shielded the approaching Inferi until they came near.  
  
Rudie made that sound like a sibilant hiss that she had at the wards. This time, it didn’t appear to have any effect. One hand dripping with slimy flesh reached for Rudie’s arm, claws yearning for her skin.  
  
 _Not her wand,_ Draco saw, and his breathing eased a little. At least that suggested that the creatures, hungry or not, weren’t intelligent enough to disarm their enemies. They just wanted to eat, whether or not that was dangerous for them.  
  
Rudie’s first spell tore the arm reaching for her off the body, but the body didn’t stop. Of course it didn’t, Draco thought, and readied his own wand for a spell that would burn them. Fire was one of the few effective ways of dealing with an Inferius.  
  
Then Harry spoke, an incantation that Draco didn’t recognize and found hard to hear under the sounds of all the other battle-ready Aurors springing  _into_ battle, and the Inferi disintegrated. For a moment, Draco could see whirling clouds of dust and dried blood where they had been, held together by what looked like an eddy of wind. Then those blew apart, too, and they were suddenly and simply gone.  
  
Draco stared at Harry. “What did you  _do_?”  
  
“A Destruction Incantation,” Harry said, shrugging with one shoulder in a way that made Draco want to grab that shoulder and force Harry to look at him. But he couldn’t, so he simply stood back with his arms folded and waited for Harry to speak. Harry was peering further into the house, though, searching for the next enemy.  
  
“And what is a Destruction Incantation?” Jenkins asked, in the cool tone that Draco couldn’t bring himself to use.  
  
“A spell that destroys anything in front of you, no matter what it is or what it’s normally vulnerable to,” Harry said. “I think I see the corridor bending again up ahead. We should be careful. Something could be waiting around the corner.”  
  
He started to move, and Elder said, in a bleat, “You invented a spell this powerful, and never thought to register yourself as a Dark spell creator with the Ministry? Don’t you know there are  _penalties_ for that?”  
  
Harry’s shoulders tensed. Draco started to turn around. The last thing they needed now was Elder distracting Harry from the task in front of them.  
  
He was in time to see Jenkins step up behind Elder, plant her wand in his back, and lean in to murmur into his ear. Draco wasn’t sure what she was saying; unfortunately, Elder’s hair blocked the shapes her lips were making. But Elder’s face turned steadily more pale, and he finally pulled away from Jenkins and stared at her as though she was a scorpion.  
  
Jenkins flipped him a jaunty little salute and walked away up the corridor, taking her place beside Warren. Draco nodded, satisfied that Elder had been handled, and hurried to catch up with Harry. Rudie was no longer in the lead, but bent over, searching through the remains of the Inferi as though she would find something there that would lead her to Macgeorge. Hell, for all Draco knew, she would.  
  
He caught up with Harry and murmured into his ear, the way Jenkins had with Elder, “Where  _did_ you find that spell?”  
  
Harry took a long, slow breath, while his hands worked in front of him as though he was wringing out a rag. Then he admitted, “I invented it.”  
  
“ _Did_ you?” Draco ran his fingers lightly over Harry’s back, and said nothing, while gazing over his shoulder for signs of approaching Inferi. The walls around them at least looked ordinary now, though now and then they gleamed in the light of their wands with the slickness of revealed muscle.  
  
“Yes,” Harry said. “It was—I don’t remember it very well. Shouldn’t we concentrate on what we’re going to do when we come up to this corner?”  
  
“Warren and Jenkins are going to handle that,” Draco said, which was true, since they were in front and already fanning out to make sure that nothing waited beyond the corner that could surprise them. “I’m more interested in hearing about this Destruction Incantation.” He pressed his fingers gently into the nape of Harry’s neck, trying to show him that he was fine with whatever Harry said to him. “What do you mean, you don’t remember coming up with it?  _I_ would remember inventing that powerful and useful a spell.”  
  
Harry’s chuckle was rusty. “Is it really that useful a spell? It only has one purpose, to destroy. I thought Slytherins liked spells that did more than one thing.”  
  
Draco smiled against the back of his neck. “That’s plans.” Yes, joking with Harry wasn’t the smartest thing to do right now, maybe, but on the other hand, Draco didn’t want to bolt for the first time since they had walked into this house, which was worth something.  
  
“Right.” Harry finally relaxed enough to speak normally, or so Draco thought. “I invented it during one of those cases where Lionel and I were probably facing a twisted, although we didn’t know they were called that at the time. This witch just wouldn’t stop coming, or casting spells, or cursing Lionel. So I called on all the desire I had to save him, and shaped it into an incantation that seemed to fit. After the case, I realized I remembered the incantation and I could probably use it other times, too.”  
  
Draco was silent for a few seconds, because he knew what that sounded like, but he wasn’t sure Harry would accept it.  
  
“It sounds like you drew on your magical core,” he said. “That’s—important, Harry, and special. It might indicate that you’re powerful, that you could be a spell creator if you wanted.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. “Yes, tell me that I’m special,” he said. “Because I’ve never heard  _that_ before.”  
  
Draco would have said something about how at least Harry had used that spell to protect  _their_ lives this time and not that waste of time Lionel Vane’s life, but Warren went still in front of them, and Draco put a hand on Harry’s shoulder instead, holding them both ready to respond to whatever was coming.  
  
Warren dropped to one knee, and Jenkins stepped forwards, leaning over her shoulder. Draco saw both of them nodding, but he had missed whatever words they might have exchanged before that to explain the nods.  
  
Then golden, almost delicate circles of light left their wands and flew down the corridor. They looked like smoke rings, or ripples of the sun on water, and Draco was tempted to watch them out of sight. But Harry had covered his eyes and was lifting his hand towards Draco’s, so Draco took the hint and did the same thing.  
  
The next minute, a gentle draft of heat and wind lifted him from his feet and sent him flying into Harry.  
  
Harry turned sideways, casting what Draco thought was a Sticking Charm on the wall and binding himself there as he caught Draco’s arms. Draco braced his own feet, having no desire to blow further down the corridor, and turned his head in the direction of the explosion, wondering whether it was the doing of Jenkins and Warren’s spell or something that spell had met further down the corridor.  
  
A pained roar came to their ears and answered at least part of the question. When Draco could see through the afterimages, Warren had drawn back to cast another spell, and Jenkins had bounded around the corner.  
  
Rudie, on the other hand, was standing in front of what looked like a motionless part of the wall, examining it with her fingertips. When she saw Draco looking at her, she sniffed. “We aren’t going to find Nicolette by rushing around the house,” she said. “She’s nearby, behind this wall. I can feel it.”  
  
“Don’t tell Malfoy anything that you want to keep hidden, Isla,” Elder said, with a slow, magisterial shake of his head. “Unless it’s the kind of thing that would damage lives by keeping it hidden. Then he’ll hold onto the secret.”  
  
Draco didn’t bother answering the accusation, because as far as he could tell, Rudie hadn’t paid the slightest bit of attention to Elder. She pressed her fingers in and down, and then hooked them up, and a door opened in the wall.  
  
Draco glanced in Warren’s direction, but she was casting spells down the corridor to help her partner, and Jenkins was calling spells in a steady voice, and whatever they had roused from sleep was still screaming and waving its tentacles, or whatever else it had that could cause the strangely-moving group of shadows on the floor. Draco didn’t dare interrupt them. Harry was trembling on one foot, poised to rush forwards into that battle.  
  
Draco was the one who had to make the decision, as much as it would probably involve having to work with Elder. He took Harry’s elbow in two fingers and jerked his head at the door Rudie had opened, which she had already mostly vanished through.  
  
“Someone ought to get their attention,” Harry said, nodding at Warren’s back.  
  
“We’ll leave the door open,” Draco said, and plunged into the new corridor with Harry right between him. At least if Harry was between him and Elder, there was less chance of a fatal accident.  
  
 _For either me or Elder._  
  
*  
  
Harry blinked when he stepped through the door that Rudie had opened into a small, dark corridor with the same soft gleam of muscle and flesh in its walls. Here, though, lit torches gleamed, and if Harry ignored how red-pink their light was and how much their sconces looked like curled tongues, it was almost pleasant.  
  
“Tell me when you prepare to betray us, so I can curse you first,” Elder said from behind Draco.  
  
“If you don’t stop speaking right now,” Harry said, in a gentle voice, “I’ll use a Destruction Incantation on  _you_ , and there’ll be nothing left for whatever grieving family you have to bury.”  
  
“What family?” Draco muttered, but he hushed when Harry put his hand on his shoulder. Elder, unable to learn from experience, was still blinking at Harry as if stunned, and Harry thought that was enough to keep him quiet right now.  
  
“This is the way to Nicolette,” Rudie said, so abruptly that Harry jumped, and he turned back to see her trotting further into the house, through the red-pink shadows on the floor. Harry shook his head and followed her, with Draco strung out behind him, and then Elder. After a few seconds of that, Harry dropped back so that Draco was safely by his side.  
  
Elder made a soft, complaining, huffing noise, which Harry chose to ignore. He felt the deepest sympathy for Draco at having to work with Elder even for the duration of one case.   
  
 _Let’s hope he doesn’t get us killed on this one._  
  
The corridor began to bend in front of them, and narrow down, until Harry was afraid they might have to crawl on their bellies through it as if it was a tunnel. Before that could happen, though, it just ended, in a wall that looked more solid than the rest of them, or at least less likely to quiver.  
  
Rudie halted and reached out in front of her, tracing her hands up and down like a blind woman. Draco drew his breath to say something, but Elder brushed past them before he could, and Harry saw him crouch down beside Rudie, staring intently into her face as if he would find her secrets written on her skin.  
  
Then Harry shuddered and wished he  _hadn’t_ thought that, because it reminded him way too much of their last case. So he missed some of Elder’s words to Rudie, although when he began to listen again, it was perfectly obvious what the bastard was talking about.  
  
“…how do you know that this is the way to Nicolette, Isla? I understand that you shared a special connection with her since she was your partner, but she hasn’t been your partner for weeks now. The thing that she carries in her head could influence her to act in any way it wants. Are you  _sure_ that this is the best way to go?”  
  
 _And that’s a question that I suppose the rest of us should have asked Rudie a while ago,_ Harry thought, leaning back with his arms folded and shaking his head.  _Perhaps there’s some good in Elder after all._  
  
If there was, Rudie was like Draco in not being able to see it. She simply gave Elder a glance from the corner of her eyes that dismissed him quite as easily as if she’d spoken, and then kept working on the wall. This time, she was touching it, and Harry heard the squelching sound that it made. He concealed a shudder.  
  
“I know something that may help,” Draco said, and forced his way past Harry when Harry instinctively tried to block him, walking towards the wall that Elder and Rudie paused in front of.  
  
Elder looked at him with pity in his eyes, and Harry really didn’t want to know the reason. Before he could say anything, however, Rudie turned around and asked Draco, “Something that might allow me to reach Nicolette?”  
  
“How sure are you that she’s behind this wall?” Draco pointed out, and laid his wand along his arm, in a position that told Harry what he was going to do. Harry backed up a step, then reminded himself of the need to support his partner and stood still.  
  
“Sure,” Rudie said, and her face burned with the clean fire of fanaticism, her eyes alight. “ _Sure_.”  
  
Draco nodded, and then spoke a liquid-sounding incantation of the kind that Harry had never liked. The wall in front of him writhed, shimmered, twisted, and disappeared. Harry winced once from the sound, and once from watching it retract like that. The Dark spell Draco had used was one that forced a living object to move out of the way by twisting its body until it did. It made sense to use on a house that seemed partially alive, like this one did, but still never pleasant to see or listen to.  
  
Elder opened his mouth, no doubt to blame Draco for the Dark curse—  
  
And then Ernhardt attacked, so what Elder would have had to say became more or less irrelevant.


	11. Facing the Worst

Ernhardt wielded Macgeorge’s body like a puppet. Her eyes shone bright blue, and she stretched out her arms and leaned forwards from the place where she stood, in an unnatural posture, scattering what looked like flakes of ash to the floor.  
  
Harry was rolling before Draco could comprehend what he was doing, shoving Draco behind him and trying to face the danger alone. Draco kicked him in the shins and strove to reach the front again. Harry had no  _right_ to hold him back like this, no right to make decisions for him. They had agreed to fight side by side.  
  
Harry ignored him, and then the ash flakes sprang up and turned into serpents with their tongues hanging out of their mouths, bones showing through sliding flesh.  
  
Draco stepped back.  _Well, all right. That is the kind of threat that he’s qualified to handle by himself, I reckon._  
  
Harry hissed, and the serpents snapped towards him and stared at him with holes in place of eyes, flicking their tongues out. Those tongues were clipped short, and Draco found that he didn’t want to know where the ends of them had gone. Harry hissed again, and the serpents turned and slinked back towards Macgeorge.  
  
She made a few movements that Draco thought were probably related to necromantic control of half-corpses, not that he would know. But the serpents didn’t listen, and came on, moving with horrid humps of their coils.  
  
Macgeorge gestured, and the serpents fell to pieces. Draco nodded. That was the best they could hope for this early in the fight, to distract her and make her waste her energy in something besides attacking them.  
  
Of course, then Rudie came along and spoiled everything, stepping forwards with her chin trembling and her own hands outstretched without a wand in sight.  
  
“Nicolette,” she whispered. “They don’t believe in you. I do. I’ll give you back what you lost. I’ll give you anything you want, as long as you tell me that you’re all right and you’re willing to come back to the Aurors with me.”  
  
Macgeorge turned her head and focused on Rudie. She smiled, and although Draco didn’t see how Rudie could find the smile enchanting in combination with those staring blue eyes, she must have. She clasped her hands, and her breath came faster and faster.  
  
“I know you believe in me,” Macgeorge whispered—but despite his attempt to imitate the voice she’d had before he took her, the only one Draco could hear speaking her words was Ernhardt, and he scolded himself for ever believing that this was Macgeorge. “I’m pleased with that, Isla. I would like to come back with you. But…” She turned back to Elder and Harry and Draco with a slight shake of her head.  
  
Rudie was trembling. Draco understood, of course,  _then_ , how very stupid it had been for them to allow her to come along with them. But they had allowed it, and here she was, and she was about to betray them all with her eagerness.  
  
“What?” Rudie whispered. “What do you need?”  
  
“ _They_ came to capture me and take me back to the Aurors with them, to execute me and not free me,” said Ernhardt, with a jerk of his head at the rest of them. “If you want to help me, then you need to hold them back so we can make our escape. I’ll come with you, as a pledge of good faith, but I can’t trust them, not after they’ve killed so many other twisted.” A delicate pause. “Or those they think of as twisted, because of course the real truth is more complicated, the way we used to discuss.”  
  
Harry’s mouth was working, but he hadn’t found the words to respond to that yet. Draco was glad. This would take careful handling, and he didn’t think Harry, as great as his strengths were, had the patience or skill for diplomacy.  
  
Before Draco could say anything, though, Elder stepped into the breach.  
  
“I don’t understand how you can believe that she intends any good,” he said to Rudie, frowning at Ernhardt. “Or he, as the case may be. You know that she’s using Dark magic. You know that he seized your former partner and he’s manipulating her, and he made her run away from the rest of the Aurors and use necromancy against us. Why would you even consider that he might be telling the truth? This is just the shell of your partner, not the reality.”  
  
Draco stared at him. Elder didn’t notice, instead continuing to frown at Ernhardt with no sign of fear. It seemed Elder had found the right words, or at least said them openly enough that Rudie would have to contend with them.  
  
 _All through having no tact or diplomacy at all, even less than Harry._  
  
Rudie had turned to face Elder, and there was a look on her face that made Draco think she would strike at him at any moment. But at least she didn’t look as if she would hand them over to Ernhardt at any second for the mere chance of freeing her precious Nicolette, either.  
  
“You can’t have any conception of what we shared,” she whispered. “ _Nothing_. And you think to lecture me about what I should or should not do?” She clenched her hands, and Draco wondered just for a moment, uneasily, what Rudie’s flaw might be. “You’re only my new partner, my replacement for Nicolette. I would give you up in a moment, give everyone up, if I might have her back.”  
  
“Yes,” said Elder. “And that’s stupid, when you think about it. When you can’t even know if she’s telling the truth, if this  _is_ her—”  
  
“From what I know of Ernhardt, he would never make an offer like this,” Rudie said, and shook her head. “He thinks himself too superior to anyone else. He would just attack, not try to fool us.”  
  
“He would do anything to turn us against each other, because that’s what Dark wizards  _do_ ,” Elder said, with iron patience. Draco had never thought he might want to bless Elder’s stubbornness. “And he’s picking on you because you’re the easy target. And if you tried to slaughter us, that would lessen the effort he has to expend against us. Of course he would try.”  
  
There was a moment when it felt like everyone in the corridor was staring at Elder. Draco thought probably everyone except him and Harry had a different motive for it, but there was no sign that Elder felt the difference in those motives. He just looked from face to face, and shook his head. “Can I be the only one who knows this?” he murmured in a self-pitying tone. “I didn’t want to think it was so, but it seems it  _is_ so.”  
  
Then Ernhardt gestured, and this time the snakes appeared right above Elder’s head and fell on him, with no chance that Harry could use Parseltongue to turn them aside.  
  
Elder raised his wand and his right arm, and for a moment Draco thought he had cast a spell. But no spell could be that quick, and no spell Draco could imagine produced that intense, shimmering  _light_ around someone, and no spell started at the level of the heart and spread out to encompass the body so fast.  
  
And no light ate attacking enemies the way that light flared and burned around the dropping snakes.   
  
Elder dropped his hand and shook his head at Ernhardt. “You can’t send Dark creatures against me,” he said, almost gently. “I can always defeat them. It’s the gift that I have because I’m a Light wizard, a faithful one. And I wish you would stop trying to trick Isla. It’s the more despicable because she might really believe that there’s something of her friend left.”  
  
 _A gift,_ Draco thought, his heart pounding hard enough that he didn’t recognize the bubble of laughter before it left his lips.  _Or his flaw. Which he doesn’t recognize for Dark magic because of the form it takes._  
  
Elder frowned at Draco as he laughed. Harry stepped in between them, and turned to face Ernhardt, beginning to chant a quiet spell.  
  
“She might still be there,” Rudie said, in the pathetic tone of a child begging for her parents to pay attention to her. “If we tried. We might still be able to free her. I’m sure of it.”  
  
“She’s gone,” Draco said, and why did it fall on  _him_  to play the role of comforter? Except that there was no one else, and they only had the freedom to talk about this in the first place because Ernhardt had been so stupefied by Elder instead of attacking. “She was gone from the first moment he claimed her mind. You know that he wouldn’t allow a rival to survive around him, and especially not in his own body.”  
  
“That’s hers, still,” Rudie said, and turned around. Draco turned, too, because he wanted to see what Ernhardt would do next and he wanted to make sure that Rudie didn’t try to interfere with Harry.  
  
Harry crossed his arms in front of him and bowed his head. Ernhardt was watching him now with his fingers on Macgeorge’s lips. His blue eyes had dimmed a little. Draco wondered what he was waiting for, why he had attacked with snakes in the first place, what was going to happen next—  
  
And then Harry’s spell flared and struck out from him, and Ernhardt made another of those gestures, similar to the ones he had made when commanding the dead snakes.  
  
The flesh of the sides of the tunnel snapped down and around Harry’s spell, eating it. Ernhardt moved away from them, shaking his head and clucking his tongue against his teeth in the annoying way that Draco’s mother had often done.  
  
“I wanted to do something more creative with you,” Ernhardt murmured. “I did so wish to enjoy seeing you in battle close up, instead of only mental battle against me. But that isn’t to be. The long-prepared trap will have to do.”  
  
He bowed, and the door Draco had moved out of the way unrolled like a tongue back over him. At the same moment, the corners of the corridor bowed around them and began to squelch inwards.  
  
As if it would swallow them. As if they stood in the middle of an enormous throat.  
  
 _And we were fools to separate from Warren and Jenkins in order to come here._  
  
*  
  
Harry had really thought that particular spell would work, as long as Ernhardt gave him the time to cast it. And Ernhardt was acting so weird already that he might have, if only to see what Harry came up with.  
  
Now the house was making motions that Harry didn’t have to translate; he knew what they were. The house was trying to  _swallow_ them.   
  
Harry didn’t intend to let it. And although his last spells had failed, he thought he could come up with one that would make the house realize they were no easy prey, and perhaps even make it spit them out.  
  
He turned slightly to the side, his wand aiming at various parts of the gleaming, slick flesh on the walls. He saw no obvious weakness, and really, how likely was it that Ernhardt’s house corresponded to a body? This might not be a throat, or the inside of a mouth, no matter how much it looked like one. That meant it wouldn’t have the same weaknesses.  
  
“What should we do?”  
  
That was Draco, close beside him and with a harsh note in his voice that made Harry reach out and place one hand on his arm. He had forgotten that Draco hadn’t heard the silent plans inside his head and might think they had no way to escape. He rubbed back and forth a moment, while the ceiling above them got lower and Rudie scraped and pounded at the tongue-door that had concealed Ernhardt.  
  
“I’m going to get us out of here,” he said. He felt much calmer than he had when the Dementor was attacking Draco, in spite of the greater danger they were in. This was the kind of situation he excelled in, and he was about to excel in it again, despite all the stupid and evil intentions Ernhardt had. “Can you calm Rudie down and make sure that she stays close to us while I cast the spells? I don’t know what we can do if she runs away.”  
  
“You can’t just use one of your Destruction Incantations?” Draco’s voice was low and intense. “Like you used to get the Inferi out of the way?”  
  
Harry smiled at him, a little grimly. “That makes the things that it’s aimed at cease to exist. What do you think would happen if the house ceased to exist right now? We might take Warren and Jenkins along with it.”  
  
Draco paused, then nodded and turned towards Rudie. Elder was poking around as though trying to find an entrance that would take him after Ernhardt. This was the best atmosphere for working undisturbed on a spell that Harry was going to get. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.  
  
The magic was waiting in him when he called it, the raw magic, the untamed magic, the magic that he didn’t use often because when he did, he didn’t really remember it afterwards. Lionel had stared at him after he invented the Destruction Incantation, and that had been a simpler situation. Harry didn’t know what would happen now if he unleashed that force.  
  
So he had to do something he had never done before, and tame and channel it.  
  
That was impossible, or so some of his Auror instructors would have told him. But they weren’t here right now, and Harry was the one who had to rise to the challenge and make sure Draco, and everyone else, was safe. So he descended deep into himself, and the magic was waiting.  
  
More than enough magic to have defeated Voldemort, he was sure now. But maybe he hadn’t really had it when he was a teenager, and things had worked out for the best anyway. He and Draco had been connected then, too.  
  
The recollection made him smile, and led him on to other memories, and convinced him of the best way to make the house spit them out. He opened his eyes and lifted his wand, holding it in front of him in a two-handed grip, the way he would a lance. He saw a movement off to the side, and knew that Elder had pressed close.  
  
“Are you going to cast a Dark spell to get us out of here?” Elder asked quietly. He could ignore the digestive juices sloshing around their feet impressively, Harry had to admit. Even if that was because his head could only contain one thought at a time, it might be the very ability they needed right now. “I think it might be better to die than go through that.”  
  
“If you know a light alternative, that’s fine,” Harry said, and felt the magic begin to burn around him, ascending rapidly in bright red and golden ripples. “But I don’t. And I think I’m going to invent a spell, anyway, so can anyone say that it’s Dark or Light until it’s existed a while?”  
  
Elder paused, and seemed to consider that. “Its intention,” he said. “And its effect. If you meant to hurt someone else, then it would be Dark, even if it saved our lives.”  
  
Harry closed his eyes and laughed. His mind was filled with memories of Potions class, and of the questions that Snape had asked him on the first day of class, and his fingers were full of the wand. “Well, think about it and tell me later.”  
  
“What are you going to do?” Elder asked, but already his voice had grown faint and far away, and Harry knew he didn’t have it in him to pay any more attention. He might have to if Elder shoved him and disrupted his concentration, but, well. At that point Harry’s magic would break out of control, and they would probably all die anyway.  
  
The magic built, and Harry’s desire built with it. He would see them out of here and safe. He would see Draco walk away from this. He would see to it that Rudie had another chance to confront Ernhardt and free the remnants of her partner, and he would let Warren and Jenkins live to fight another day. He reckoned that he could even rescue Elder, should it become necessary.  
  
 _And yourself?_  
  
It had always been the least important question, but at least he had thought it, and Draco would probably admit that was progress. Harry smiled, unable to open his eyes now, the magic fastening them shut the way it fastened his fingers to his wand. The power was all around him, and he focused it ahead of him, summoning the substance that, as far as he knew, there was no incantation to conjure. After all, anyone who wanted it as a Potions ingredient could go out and pick it.  
  
But now, Harry wanted it.  
  
He wanted, and he wanted, and his desire rose and fueled the explosion of his magic, until he heard the rushing down the corridor in front of him, and he could open his eyes to look.  
  
He was on his knees, and so were the rest of them, forced that way by the constricting of the passage. In front of him, sprouting from his wand, was a great tumble of green leaves and purple flowers. Harry nodded, and swept them straight into the sides of the throat, back and forth, making sure they brushed against the gleaming and exposed skin. He chuckled as he did it. He thought Ernhardt would regret making his house like the inside of a body soon.  
  
The throat around them wobbled and shuddered. Then something deep inside the body of the house screamed. Another scream rose before the first one had faded, and the skin shivered and began to darken. Harry laughed aloud, and Draco came to his side and stared at the leaves in front of him, shaking his head.  
  
“Harry, that looks like—wolfsbane,” he murmured.  
  
“Also called aconite,” Harry giggled, his magic still rising around him. “And monkshood. And all the other names that Snape could probably tell us, but which he isn’t here to tell us about. I’m sorry for that,” he added, seeing Draco’s wide eyes. “I would have liked it if he could have lived. And seen this.” Another fit of the giggles broke out again.  
  
Draco shook his head. “Wolfsbane is poison,” he whispered, as if reading from a Potions textbook. “Any touch to abraded skin or the  _mucous membranes_ —” and he stared at the sides of the throat “—can prove fatal.”  
  
“And vomiting is one of the first symptoms,” Harry agreed, and stood up, leaning on Draco, and motioned to the others. “We have to get out of here as soon as we can,” he said. He began to walk up the corridor, pushing the wolfsbane cluster along before them. The creature that was the house continued to scream, and Harry laughed again, knowing he probably sounded drunk. “Elder!” he called. “Have you decided yet whether this is a Light or Dark spell?”  
  
Elder, who had Rudie’s arm tucked under his, met Harry’s eyes and shook his head a little. “Since it conjures poison, I’m afraid that I would have to say it was Dark,” he said. “To my sorrow, that the Chosen One uses such spells.”  
  
Harry snorted, and giggled, and laughed, and Draco seized him and shook him. “What happens when Warren and Jenkins run into the flowers?” he insisted.  
  
Harry would have answered, but the throat around them shook in what Harry recognized as a probably fatal spasm, and he shook his head. “I think we’ll be vomited out before that can happen,” he said, and turned towards Draco, wrapping his arms around him in a hold that he hoped would both support him and protect Draco as much as possible.  
  
“Warren and Jenkins are already here,” said a calm voice from the other side of the flowers, and someone cut the clusters, making them fall to the floor. Jenkins leaned around them, crushing the wolfsbane under her boot. “Thomasina knows a spell that she thinks can get us out of here alive. Hang on.”  
  
“To what?” Harry thought he heard Draco mutter, but the question made no sense to him. Of course they were supposed to hang onto each other, and there was no reason to think they shouldn’t. He ducked his head and wrapped his arms around Draco’s waist, and he heard someone chanting.  
  
Then a tide of muscles seized them as the house did its best to die, and Elder grabbed hold of Rudie—Harry saw that much, through the flying mass of Rudie’s hair—and they were flying, and then they landed, and pain made Harry lose consciousness for a while. But he _knew_ he held Draco in his arms, and that helped.  
  
*  
  
Draco lay on the grass of the Forbidden Forest with Harry in his arms, and stared towards the convulsing house.  
  
The walls of flesh shook and vibrated back and forth, flying out of the skull’s orifices like tongues, and there were noises that might very well come from a great creature dying of aconite poisoning. All of them were outside now, although covered with a mixture of juices that Draco reckoned they should wash off as soon as they got the chance, and Jenkins and Warren were casting together, spells that should, hopefully, ward back the explosion from touching them.  
  
When the death came, it was less dramatic than Draco had thought it would be. The tongues stopped flapping, and the skull vibrated once more and was still. It rolled over, and part of it broke off, near where the nose would have been in a living human being. Then a trickle of vomit ran out of the mouth.  
  
Warren sighed and straightened up. Jenkins turned around and gave her a sharp smile.  
  
“We survived again,” Warren said.  
  
Jenkins nodded, and Draco thought she probably would have replied, but something dark and misty and  _loud_ rose up from the eyesockets of the skull, and then accelerated towards them like a comet in reverse.  
  
Jenkins turned sideways, Warren put her back against her, and they were ready to burst into the battle when Ernhardt landed in front of them, trailing smoke.  
  
Draco didn’t know if anyone was ready when the bones on the floor of the clearing rose up and began to assemble themselves into necromantic constructs, though.


	12. Here Come the Bones

Harry woke up to shrieks and rattles around him, the flash of powerful magic, and the feeling that he had already picked up a wand wearing a hundred pounds. He grimaced and forced himself up to his hands and knees, looking around for Draco.  
  
Draco stood over him, destroying the bone-creatures that Ernhardt was calling from the ground as fast as they could form. Harry shook his head. He should have known Ernhardt would survive the destruction of the house, which meant there was no sane reason for him to feel disappointed.  
  
And destroying the bones one by one like this wouldn’t help. Harry stood up and ignored his knees’ attempt to fall over with him. He willed it not to happen, which meant it wasn’t going to. He looked around for Elder.  
  
Elder was fighting back-to-back with Rudie, and it seemed his spells were effective in taking apart the bones, although Harry counted no powerful curses in the few seconds he watched him. Of course not. Too much power meant they would probably cross over the line into Dark, whatever Elder’s personal line was.  
  
“Elder!” Harry shouted, and Elder turned his head towards him, even as Rudie flicked her wand at another bone-creature and broke the spells that bound it. “You need your gift! The light! It’s the only thing strong enough to destroy them!”  
  
That led to a moment of blinking, and Harry feared horribly that Elder was going to say something about how his flaw was a gift of the light and only came when he really needed it, or was only useful against snakes, or something. But then Elder nodded, and when he turned to face the battle again, light and fire were waking around his heart.  
  
That half of the battlefield turned red and gold, and Harry whirled back to face Draco. He’d thought Ernhardt would have gone after Rudie first, but he hadn’t, which meant he was here for Draco—  
  
No, he wasn’t, Harry saw a moment later. Ernhardt was wielding Macgeorge’s body against Jenkins and Warren instead.  
  
And although Harry thought it had to be happening because of his weakened state when it came to his magic, his jaw still fell open when he saw the way they danced together.  
  
He and Draco could have equaled them on their best day. But this wasn’t his best day, not with the magic he had already used, and he was coming to be certain that Warren’s flaw was powerful and Dark curses. Warren stood in the middle of a storm of light and lightning, casting so fast Harry couldn’t tell one spell from another. He only knew that they made bones blacken and shatter and splinter and fly away from her, and it was really fucking bloody impressive.   
  
Behind her was Jenkins, and she was fighting the spells Ernhardt launched, a faint smile on her face. Harry saw the way that Ernhardt’s fingers twitched and his blue eyes flared, and thought he must already have tried to break into Jenkins’s mind. Her flaw would have protected her, then.  
  
Which didn’t say why he hadn’t tried to take over Warren’s mind, or at least Elder’s. Although maybe he thought he would become much too stupid if he was once in contact with the stubbornness that lived in Elder’s.  
  
But Warren would have made sense, especially since then he would have her flaw and knowledge of spells to turn against the rest of them. Or Draco. Or Harry. Harry must have been more vulnerable while unconscious than he would be now that he was awake and aware and watching Ernhardt.  
  
Harry caught Draco’s eye as he stepped up beside him to join in blasting the bone-creatures, and Draco nodded to him. Then he followed Harry’s gaze to Ernhardt.  
  
“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “Why isn’t he moving? He’s sacrificing his most powerful weapon to a talent that he doesn’t know how to use as well.”  
  
“Maybe he’s still working out how to control two flaws,” Harry suggested as he pierced a skull with a Lightning Dart. “And he can’t use more than one of them at the same time.”  
  
Draco gave a bitter sound that was not quite a laugh. “I’ll believe that we have that level of luck when we receive some outside confirmation,” he muttered, and turned to blast a creature with three femurs that was creeping up behind Harry. “No, I don’t know what it is, and I wish I did.”  
  
Harry nodded, but that was the only thing he had time to do before Ernhardt snapped his fingers, and a shock wave seemed to race around the bones. All of them rose into the air and began to soar. Tilting his head back and squinting, Harry thought he could see small, thin webs of Dark magic connecting them into wings.  
  
At the same time, Draco hissed and covered his left arm where the Mark would be blazing, Harry was sure, just confirming that there was Dark magic around. Harry stepped slightly away from him, and waited for the bones to hurtle down from the sky.  
  
Then his vision darkened, and he gagged, feeling the press of something sharp and splintery against the walls of his throat, feeling something else pinning him to the ground although he still stood. He tried to open his eyes past the pain, but he couldn’t. There was ebbing darkness waiting for him, tinged with red and black, and finality.  
  
 _A vision._  
  
This was the vision he was having of someone’s death, his own flaw coming to life. He almost never experienced it except for a genuine murder, which meant someone around him had a high chance of dying in a few minutes.  
  
Or seconds, even. Harry reached out and put a groping hand on Draco’s arm. Draco squeezed his hand and waited silently for him to speak.  
  
“He’s going to let the bones fall,” Harry whispered. “To fall, and pin us to the ground, and break apart in our skin. He’s going to pierce us like those insects that Muggles like to nail down. And I think I’m feeling your death.”  
  
There was a silence during which he found it hard to imagine Draco doing anything except going pale, but when he spoke, his voice was quiet, kind, and prepared. “It’s all right, Harry. I know what I have to do. Elder won’t like it, but since when do I care what he likes?”  
  
“Well, his flaw probably did save us a little while ago,” Harry said, and opened his eyes slowly as the vision faded. He had never felt one that strongly. Of course, he was already weakened this time, and most of the time, the deaths he envisioned were quicker if more awful. This was pain that had lingered. Ernhardt probably planned to leave them to bleed to death.  
  
“I still don’t care what he likes,” Draco replied. “I care about what he can  _do_.”  
  
Harry laughed, and looked up in time to see Draco lift his wand and close his eyes. A certain stillness in his body told Harry what spell he planned to cast before he cast it.  
  
Harry grasped Draco’s arms and leaned into him, partially for his own support, but even more because Draco might fall over when the spell was done, and still more because he wanted to hear Draco’s heartbeat still laboring softly and know that he wasn’t dead yet.  
  
*  
  
Draco was remembering long afternoons and evenings spent in the embrace of the library at Malfoy Manor. He had studied dusty books, and books worn with the fingers of his ancestors, and books that had warning spells attached to them, and books that had chains or jewels set around the edges of their covers. He had read spells he couldn’t imagine ever using, simply for the fun of research.  
  
And he had read one that would save them now.  
  
“ _Protego_ ,” he whispered, and felt his power stir inside him, plus the flare of pain in his Mark that presaged the rising of Dark magic. “ _Protego contra tota_.” The pain grew worse, and the power rose. “ _Protego contra tota!_ ”  
  
The pain left him at the same moment as the power did, and Draco hissed as he watched the shield form over them, a huge, high dome looming against the sky, at the same moment as the bones wheeled away from their wings of Dark energy and began to fall. The bones did indeed have pointed ends that would have pierced flesh if directed, as Draco suspected Ernhardt could do. Harry’s flaw had saved their lives again.  
  
The dome built itself of dirt, a few bones that Ernhardt must have missed and left lying on the ground, the bark and branches of trees—and skin and flesh from the people it was supposed to be defending, which was why it was called Dark. Draco grimaced as a long strip of skin tore away from his arm, but he knew the shield would be all the stronger for it, attuned to the people under it. That meant Ernhardt would have a hard time sneaking in under it.  
  
 _Unless he chooses to leap out of Macgeorge’s body and possess someone who’s already sheltering here._  
  
But for whatever reason, Ernhardt hadn’t done that. Warren and Jenkins, the ones closest to him, hadn’t really tried to attack Macgeorge’s body either, but Draco knew why. Kill his body, and Ernhardt would have no  _choice_ but to abandon it and aim for one of them. They didn’t know which one he would most yearn to possess, either.  
  
The dome finished itself, and the only sound was blood dripping into the mud from their wounded arms and Warren and Jenkins catching their breaths. Both of them stepped back at the same time and turned their heads to look at Draco. Draco raised his eyebrows and shrugged. He had done what he had to, and if he’d warned them, there was no keeping it from Ernhardt, either.  
  
Elder was the first to speak, of course, the light dying away from his arms as his flaw went back to sleep. “More Dark magic?” he asked, his voice as heavy as the bones would have been in the still air. “Of course it is. You don’t know how to use anything else, Mr. Malfoy.” He sighed. “I’m afraid that only speeds up my decision.”  
  
“To report me to the Ministry?” Draco asked, not at all surprised when Elder nodded. “And that means that you’ll report Harry and Warren and Jenkins and Rudie as well?”  
  
Elder frowned at him. “Other than Auror Potter, they didn’t use as much Dark magic as you did.”  
  
“Necromancy  _is_ Dark magic,” Draco said, but had to cut off when Rudie’s dash at the side of the dome reminded him that they had bigger problems than Elder’s moral code. He raised his wand and cast a Tripping Jinx that sent Rudie sprawling on the torn-up earth of the clearing. “Are you  _mental_?” he snapped at her. “Wanting to break the dome? Ernhardt is still out there, and he can’t get at us right now, but he’ll find a way to do it on his own soon.”  
  
“He still has Nicolette’s body,” Rudie said grimly, struggling up. “There’s a chance I can give it back to her.”  
  
Draco shut his eyes and gritted his teeth, so Harry was the one who answered. “Isla,” he said gently, “Nicolette is dead. She has to be. Ernhardt would have murdered her the minute he took over her body, so that he would have full access to it and her talents.”  
  
“Really?” Rudie turned and sneered at them. “Then why hasn’t he jumped away from this empty body he could leave lying on the ground and possessed one of us?”  
  
“We don’t know that. He could still be trying to learn how to control the necromancy—”  
  
“If he’s left rotting corpses as guardians on his house, then he’s done one of the most difficult things of all.” Rudie paced in a circle and glared at them all impartially. “I know you don’t want to believe it, but I know a little about necromancy from what Nicolette said. And that’s a  _hard_ thing to do. He’s mastered it. But why doesn’t he leave the body?”  
  
“We’ve been hunting him too closely,” Jenkins said, but her voice was thoughtful, and she watched Rudie as if the idea was new to her.  
  
“No, we haven’t,” Rudie snapped. “He could have possessed someone and drawn them here to help him before we arrived, while he hid Nicolette’s body safely somewhere else. Then he’d leap the minute we damaged that body. No, I think that Nicolette is still alive, and he hasn’t managed to kill her at all. I think he was damaged when he was forced to take her over, and this is the best chance we have to kill him permanently. I think he doesn’t dare possess someone else because then she’ll take her body back.”  
  
Draco blinked. He had to admit that the idea was intriguing, and it would explain some of the things Ernhardt had done that didn’t otherwise make sense.  
  
But they had no  _proof,_ and he wasn’t willing to risk all their lives on one Auror’s wild speculation. “Isla,” he said, hoping that addressing her by her first name would win her attention for him just as it had done for Harry, “you don’t  _know_ that, and you can’t put our lives at risk just because you want her back.”  
  
“None of the rest of you care.” Rudie’s eyes flashed like a wolf’s. “I might as well fight for her, because no one else will.”  
  
“If you could prove this to us,” Jenkins said, “then the rest of us would join you in fighting.”  
  
Elder stood up a little and held his head in a way Draco thought was meant to make light flash off his hair, although under the dome it had little effect. “Not all of us,” he said. “It would depend on whether the rest of you proposed to use Dark magic to free Macgeorge or not—”  
  
Jenkins gave him a look that seemed to wither his tongue in his mouth, a look Draco wished he could learn from her. With Elder silenced, she turned back to Rudie. “Is there any proof you can offer us?”  
  
Rudie smiled like the house had, with all her teeth and with the flesh seeming to draw back from the bone on her cheeks. “Nothing you can accept. I know that Nicolette is still alive because I take it on faith.”  
  
“Idiot,” Draco said, without much heat. “What do you  _think_ we’re going to say to that? Of course we don’t have a choice but to keep you back, because you might do anything in the name of winning your precious Nicolette.”  
  
“She deserves that kind of devotion,” Rudie said, facing the dome again. “She was spending her strength like water on  _your_ case, but there was no one to tell her she shouldn’t do that, because God forbid that she tend to her own cause for once.” Her voice hissed like a dying fire. “So, yes, I’ll do this. I’m the only one who cares enough to.”  
  
She lifted her wand, and Draco didn’t know what spell she might have uttered, because Jenkins gestured with her own wand. Her nonverbal hex stiffened Rudie and toppled her into the grass. Warren stepped up and disarmed her.  
  
“That was my partner you just assaulted,” Elder said, but Draco noticed that he avoided looking at Jenkins as he spoke, opting to look grave and stern at Warren.  
  
Warren shrugged. “And she was putting us in jeopardy. She oughtn’t to have been allowed to come on this case at all.” She turned to Jenkins. “Do you think we ought to consider the Joining Circle?”  
  
Jenkins grimaced. “I hate that. It takes so much out of you.” She glanced at the rest of them. “And Elder might not lend us his strength for it, and Potter is already exhausted, and Malfoy isn’t much better after raising this dome.”  
  
“What Joining Circle are you talking about?” Draco asked, trying to stand up straight and not sway. “I know several spells by that name.”  
  
“Then you’re better-educated than I am.” Jenkins touched her mouth with one finger. “There’s only one I know of. It means that all the Aurors join their minds and their magic, and then the strongest one, or the least exhausted one in this case, directs them to act as one. They can be stronger than the sum of their parts that way.”  
  
“That’s the one I was thinking of,” Draco said, and tried to swallow away his fear. “You really think the situation is desperate enough for that?”  
  
“Yes,” Jenkins said. “Or, at least, I think that Warren wouldn’t have brought it up if there was any other choice.” She slewed around and stared at her partner. “Would you have?”  
  
Warren looked at Jenkins and raised her eyebrows. Draco read some of the silent communication that flowed between them, which clearly said that Jenkins should stop asking stupid questions.  
  
“What makes you think I would help you?” Elder had recovered the full use of his tongue—which was a pity—and stood with one hand cocked on his hip and turning his head back and forth between them with a frank stare.   
  
“We know you won’t,” Jenkins said. “So we won’t ask you.”  
  
Warren grimaced at her. “It won’t work as well with two strong Aurors and two exhausted ones as it would with three strong ones and two exhausted ones.”  
  
Jenkins inclined her head in the way Draco had seen wizards use to acknowledge a curse hitting during a duel. “I know. But I don’t think that we’ll get anything useful out of him, and I would rather go ahead and chance failure than try to convince him.”  
  
“It might be that you could convince me,” Elder said, rocking forwards a little. “If you would talk to me and explain why a spell like this isn’t Dark.”  
  
“Ridiculous,” Jenkins said, and turned her back without waiting for a further argument, which Draco appreciated was much the best way to deal with Elder. “All right, Thomasina. If you’re ready, you can begin the Chant.”  
  
“I suppose it won’t do me any good to ask what you’re going to do?” Harry asked, almost meekly.  
  
Jenkins smiled at him and shook her head. “Just stand ready to lend your strength to the Chant when it gets to you.” And she walked over and bent down to check on Rudie, as though to make sure her binding still held.  
  
Harry glanced at Draco as Warren closed her eyes and began to speak, in what sounded more like a mumble to herself than an incantation. “I suppose you know something about what’s going on?” he asked.  
  
Draco had to smile at the way Harry had opened the question, the same way he had when asking Jenkins and Warren about the Joining Circle, but said only, “Yes. It joins us together and makes us into one being, but with greatly multiplied strength. Someone has to lead, though, and that’s the person who begins the Chant. Warren is the least tired of us, I think, so it makes sense that it should be her.”  
  
“That, and because there’s a greater chance Ernhardt might try to take over her mind,” Jenkins said over her shoulder. “He can’t take mine, you know how to fight him, and this spell lends Warren some degree of protection.”  
  
Harry grimaced and nodded. “How do we know when we should join?”  
  
“You’ll feel the magic reaching out,” Draco said, his voice thick. He disliked surrendering like this; he had once promised himself that he would never do it again after taking the Mark. But needs must when something that might be worse than the Dark Lord was on the other side of the barrier. “Believe me, you’ll  _know_. And not have much choice.”  
  
“Does anyone  _care_ what I think?” Elder asked loudly.  
  
“No,” Jenkins said. “Because we know that you’ll only get in the way, and intrude your moral scruples where it’s your magic we want.”  
  
Elder took a step forwards, but something—perhaps the wand Draco saw moving lazily by Jenkins’s leg—stopped him from continuing. “I could help you,” he said. “Give me a few moments, and I could find some sufficiently Light magic that would free us from this dome and keep us safe from that monster out there.”  
  
“Then tell us what it is,” said Jenkins, and faced Elder with a faint smile. Draco knew she was probably only indulging him at all because it would be a means to spare her partner. “Let us know what powerful spell exists that doesn’t involve expending a lot of energy and isn’t Dark.”  
  
Elder sneered at her. “Wouldn’t you  _like_ to know what it is?”  
  
“Yes,” Jenkins said serenely. “That’s why I asked.”  
  
Elder looked stumped, and Draco turned away from him. He thought it unlikely that Elder would cast a spell requiring their attention, and he needed to speak to Harry about a few things that would matter when the Circle came around.  
  
Harry’s eyes were closed, and his face pale. He seemed to concentrate entirely on his breathing for a few seconds, and jumped when Draco touched his arm. “What?” he snapped, opening his eyes to stare at him.  
  
Draco sighed softly. “I wanted to know whether you think you can do this. Are you too tired? I’ll make sure that the full burden of what Warren’s asking falls on me when the spell comes around, if you are.”  
  
Harry swallowed, and tried several times to get the words out before he said, “How do I know that  _you’re_ not too tired to do this? Or maybe you would be fine with as much as the spell’s going to demand from you, but you would collapse if you had to take my own part and yours too. No. I’ll be fine.”  
  
Draco eyed his pale face, but said nothing. He recognized the Chant building from Warren’s lips, and he knew that the magic would come seeking them soon.  
  
It started with a tumbling of sparks from Warren’s direction, sparks that turned a harsh and radiant white. Harry watched them in wonder, blinking now and then, with long, slow seconds between the blinks that were filled with the beat of Draco’s heart.  
  
Then the sparks swept towards Harry, and he stepped forwards and opened his arms to embrace them.  
  
The sparks surrounded him, leaping up and down as though they were ashes cast on a hearth. Harry tossed his head back, and gasped aloud once, in a way that hooked harsh claws into Draco’s heart, but a second later he smiled, and the sparks blended into his skin. He turned and held his hand out to Draco.  
  
Draco started forwards to take it, and take his place in the spell.  
  
Then he heard a scuffle off to the side, and a moment later the dome began to tremble and rip, with a blue light blazing beyond and shining under the skin and bones and bark and all the other things Draco had lifted to make it.  
  
Harry cursed in a ragged, breathless voice and slapped his hand out. Draco didn’t have time to blink before Harry grabbed him and dragged him close, and the magic burst into his own skin and through him as Harry shouted something out—  
  
Something that was  _not_ the Joining Circle or any chant connected with it that Draco had ever heard.  
  
He had only a moment to remind himself of how Harry could develop spells from his core before the dome collapsed, and Ernhardt stood before them.


	13. Final, and Losing

There was a mingled blast of breath and hatred from Ernhardt’s mouth, and Draco had the confused, blurred impression that Ernhardt lashed out with fingers that might have claws on them. It was only a moment, only a second during which he saw them, but he felt his heartbeat soar because it was  _another_ thing Ernhardt had mastered, another unexpected gift, another flaw, and he didn’t know how they were going to fight someone who had three—  
  
Then the claws seemed to catch in something, white and loud like lightning striking in the same place, and Draco blinked and saw what had really happened. A mesh of pale light had sprung up in front of them, and it coiled inwards and downwards, tangling Ernhardt in it before he realized what was happening.   
  
Harry dragged Draco to the side at that point, and Draco fell with him, too surprised not to. He heard loud, tearing sounds, and wondered if Ernhardt had managed to wrestle his way free of Harry’s spell. But when he looked up, it was to see a dim figure still struggling furiously in the wake of the light, spitting curses that went nowhere.  
  
Then the sounds repeated in Draco’s ear, and he swung his head around.  
  
Harry was coughing, and wiping dark liquid away from the side of his mouth. Draco knew what it was, and shoved him to the ground, casting a Muscle Relaxation Charm when Harry tried to stand up again.  
  
“Draco, what the fuck are you  _doing_ —” Harry kicked his legs out, and snarled when he found they wouldn’t obey him. “You—”  
  
“You’ve exhausted your magic to the point that you’re coughing up blood because it’s taking strength from your body,” Draco said, reciting the details the way he would if he was reading them from a textbook page. It was the only way he could keep from screaming. “Internal bleeding is almost always one of the first symptoms. Stay still, you  _idiot,_ and maybe we can save your life if not your magic.”  
  
Harry blinked at him, and stayed still.  
  
Draco turned back to Ernhardt, shaking. He clutched his wand with fingers that shook, and  _that_ would never do. He might lose it, and with it he would lose his chance to access spells and defend Harry. So he forced his hand to stop shaking because he  _willed_ it, and looked carefully at what the mesh had done to Ernhardt.  
  
Apparently slowed him down long enough that Warren and Jenkins could join the battle; that seemed to be the main effect. Warren must have given up the Joining Circle Chant when Ernhardt interrupted and Harry used the magic to defend Draco rather than link back to her. They were pounding towards him with their wands out, and had already launched several curses. Some of the spells sparked and faded on the mesh, damaging neither it nor Ernhardt, and others landed on him but didn’t seem to do much damage.  
  
Draco studied Jenkins’s mouth and the tight set of it, and knew she had made the decision to destroy Macgeorge’s body if she could. They might have to risk Ernhardt leaping and taking over someone else. She wanted this enemy down and dead.  
  
So did Draco, for that matter. And a spell had occurred to him, welling into his mind from the memories of the books he had sorted through in his family’s library.  
  
It was a spell that he would never ordinarily think of using, because it was Dark, and more than that, it was something that had sickened him the first time he read it. He had shut his eyes and pushed his book away, nauseated and shaking, and hadn’t gone back to the library for weeks. Ever since then, he had carefully avoided the one grimoire he had found it in. His ancestors could cast such things, or his parents. Draco Malfoy, who would become an Auror, had no need of them.  
  
But Draco Malfoy who had become an Auror with a potentially dying partner and facing the hardest enemy they had ever tried to fight might have need of it.  
  
He could remember the incantation, because it had seared itself into his memory the way that horrible things so often did. He woke at night remembering the way Nagini had looked as she crawled towards him with her jaws open, the one time that Draco had thought the Dark Lord really  _would_ permit her to eat him, and he woke at night remembering this.  
  
“ _Animum liber_ ,” he whispered, and heaved in a deep breath as the magic shook him. He was tired, too, although nowhere near the level of  _idiot_ tired that Harry was, and he thought he could do this. “ _Animum liber,_ bastard.”  
  
He hadn’t meant the spell enough the first time, it seemed, because it had to be cast with hatred and commitment, the way the Unforgivables did. But Draco had managed a convincing Cruciatus as the Dark Lord’s torturer, because he had to. And he cast the spell that would hopefully cut Ernhardt’s soul loose from the body he had possessed, because he had to.  
  
Elder stared at him with his face like a white flame. Draco ignored that. The spell was taking effect now, a swarm of curling dark tendrils under the white mesh that Harry had created, and Ernhardt was fighting it with all his breath.  
  
There was nothing physical for a spell like this to lock onto, but that had never been a problem with magic. That they had a hold Draco knew when they tightened and glowed, and then the black strands began to pulse. The way that Nagini’s body did when she was feeding, Draco thought, and shuddered, but didn’t look away.  
  
Harry’s hand reached up and clutched at his elbow, trembling. Draco bent down towards him, not taking his eyes from Ernhardt.  
  
“You didn’t need to do that,” Harry whispered. “Not for me.”  
  
“I needed to do that for so many reasons that I can’t count them,” Draco snapped back. He was still shaking, and he balled his hands into fists, so he wouldn’t lash out and hurt Harry. He wanted to order him to lie back down, but he still couldn’t take his eyes from that choking black light.  
  
“ _Finite Incantatem_.”  
  
It was Elder’s voice, flat and almost gentle, the way Draco had heard him speak to crying victims. No one had ever said that he wasn’t a good Auror, Draco thought as he turned around slowly, his mouth opening to yell at Elder—  
  
But it was too late, and the spell had already crackled out and attacked the glowing light of Draco’s spell. It threaded through all the veins, and irradiated them with light—of course it did, Draco thought, because trust Elder to make even a  _Finite_ some sort of spell of the Light—and then tugged. And the web Draco had created to take Ernhardt’s soul from Macgeorge’s body and finally free them all from the threat collapsed and vanished.  
  
Ernhardt thrust and twisted, and for a moment Draco thought he saw his body fracturing like a flock of birds. But that was only the blue light from his eyes, flashing and fading in and out as his eyes blinked open and shut. Ernhardt lashed again, and the mesh Harry had risked his life to conjure broke around him.  
  
Ernhardt stared at them for a moment, at a panting Draco and a gasping Harry, at Jenkins who had closed in enough that she might be able to launch a deadly curse, and Warren, crouching down beside her partner and beginning to chant.  
  
Draco could almost follow the pattern of his thoughts, and wasn’t really surprised when he turned and began to run towards the remains of the torn dome, whipping his arms to the side, and then his whole body, when Warren tried to curse him.  
  
He went straight past a tree, and paused to use its shelter to Apparate. Draco’s throat was burning with his shouts, his head aching with his fury, and he would have run after him if he could have risked leaving Harry alone.   
  
But there was something else near Ernhardt besides the tree, something Draco had forgotten because he had enough already to think about. It moved, and its hand lashed out and closed around Ernhardt’s ankle, knuckles turning white with the kind of grip that Draco thought only death could dislodge.  
  
Rudie reared up and spat spells in counterpoint to Ernhardt’s incantations, and the air around them turned misty, steamy, from the competition of leaping, clashing magic. Draco winced and tried not to hide his head from the sheer noise and fury of it. He wanted to see what happened.  
  
Ernhardt wavered, and vanished in the next few seconds. Rudie went with him, still clinging to his ankle like a diver trying to drag a shark ashore by main strength.  
  
Then the clearing was quiet, or at least quieter than it had been, and they could relax amid the mud and the blood and the splintered bones, and the rage and hatred and fear that curled through Draco as he turned to face Elder.  
  
*  
  
Harry knew that look on Draco’s face, because he had seen it before when they fought the twisted. It meant that Draco was ready to commit murder.  
  
But this time, Harry had to stop him, because the person he was preparing to kill was a fellow Auror. A  _stupid_ fellow Auror, of course, standing there with his arms folded and an expression of self-righteousness on his face, but still. Draco would spend the rest of his life in Azkaban if he slaughtered Elder right now.  
  
The problem was, Harry didn’t think he could lift himself from the ground. His limbs shook, still half-relaxed, and black stars kept exploding in front of his eyes. Harry knew he was lucky to have kept awake this long.  
  
So he used his weakness as a weapon the same way he would have used his strength. He coughed and winced when he felt the cough travel deeper than he had intended, and the next time he gasped, blood came out on his breath.  
  
Draco whipped around and dropped to his knees beside him instantly, and Harry winced when he saw that Draco was shaking. But the pain in his chest and his magical core, or at least that was what it felt like, went so deep that he was soon wincing for other reasons.  
  
“God, what a fool I am,” Draco whispered, and his arms curved around Harry like steel cables. “We have to get you to safety. Of  _course_ we do. Can you—can you forgive me that I ever thought anything was more important?” His eyes found Harry’s, and his expression was almost frantic.  
  
Harry smiled at him, then closed his eyes as another spasm racked him. This time it felt as if his lungs were dancing in his chest as they filled up with fluid, which was  _not_ a fun sensation. “Sure,” he whispered. “Meanwhile, the private Healer we’ve used before, please?”  
  
“He needs to go to St. Mungo’s.”  
  
That was Warren. Harry drifted, letting Draco himself argue with Warren and remind her about the ban on going to St. Mungo’s that Harry had earned. There was another conversation going on, too, but Harry was too ill to pay attention to it until the voices rose and seared themselves into his mind.  
  
“He was going to use  _a spell that destroys the soul—_ ”  
  
“Who the fuck cares, when that would have meant stopping Ernhardt, and perhaps even bringing back Macgeorge, if her partner was right about her spirit surviving?” Jenkins said the whole thing in a flat voice that seemed to indicate how uninterested she was. “Instead, you prompted the escape of the twisted we were hunting, one of the most dangerous enemies the Ministry has ever faced, and the loss of another Auror. Good job.”  
  
“But not even someone like Ernhardt deserves to have his soul destroyed.”  
  
“I don’t want to argue with you.” Jenkins’s voice was low and very pleasant now, and Harry shivered while his mind wandered back to the argument between Draco and Warren—no, not argument, they had agreed to take him to hospital. Harry reckoned that was good. “Come with us.”  
  
“I don’t want to go anywhere with Dark wizards. And I have reports to make to the Ministry about the souls of their trusted Socrates Aurors, as well as preparations to make for my transfer into another Corps—”  
  
There was an agonized cry, and Harry heard the sound that someone’s arm made when you wrenched it up so that they couldn’t move without breaking the bone. He smiled faintly. Not that he would know that from personal experience, or anything.  
  
“I think you’re coming with us,” Jenkins said. “I won’t extend this very special and personal invitation again.”  
  
Then the blackness that had been waiting for Harry while he fended it off and argued that he needed to stay awake flowed over him, and Harry had no idea what might have happened next—although he resolved to make Draco tell him when he got a chance.  
  
*  
  
“We do it the way we agreed.”  
  
Draco nodded. Jenkins had taken Elder somewhere, probably back to the Ministry. At the moment, he didn’t care where, as long as it was a place where Elder couldn’t fulfill his expressed intention to report Harry and the rest of them. He was glad that Warren was with him, anyway. She was more solid and calmer than Jenkins, and less scary. And their plan depended more on overwhelming the St. Mungo’s staff than on frightening them.  
  
Warren nodded back, and then walked through the entrance of St. Mungo’s as if she did this every day. Maybe she  _did,_ Draco reflected, following her with Harry still draped in his arms, made as comfortable as possible with Lightening Charms. He had no idea how many times she or Jenkins might have been wounded on duty.  
  
The welcome witch on duty recognized Harry, and stood up with her mouth opening. Warren didn’t give her a chance to speak. She simply cut her dead with a glare that made the poor woman sink back, trembling a little, and then turned to Draco and asked, “What are his symptoms?’  
  
“Coughing up blood,” Draco said. “Unconsciousness. Ragged breathing. Intense struggle even to stand or hang onto someone right before he went unconscious.” Speaking the symptoms didn’t make him feel any better, and if it would have done anything but make him feel better, he would have hitched Harry closer to him.  
  
Warren turned back towards the welcome witch, and the Healer who had appeared behind her. “What do those symptoms say to you?” she asked, looking back and forth between them as if she thought the answer was as likely to come from either.  
  
“Intense magical exhaustion, with concomitant draining of the magical core,” the Healer said promptly, and then frowned and brushed a hand down his green robes as if he had left something behind. “But—”  
  
“On the brink of death?” Warren asked, snapping out the words as though she was reading from a report in front of the Head Auror.  
  
“Yes,” the Healer said, and glanced at Harry and the scar on his forehead as if, by glaring at it, he could change the scar into a different shape.  
  
Warren nodded. “Then you will be responsible for Harry Potter’s death,” she said, “since he arrived on the brink of death and you refused to treat him. I’ll be sure to get your name from your superiors so I can spell it properly in my report. Come, Auror Malfoy.” And she turned on her heel to march out again.  
  
Draco grimaced, and followed. This was the riskiest part of their plan. He thought it more than likely that the Healer wouldn’t bother to call them back.  
  
But perhaps the Healer thought it wasn’t his responsibility to make that kind of decision, because Draco heard him say, “Damn,” helplessly, and then he called after them, “Bring him in! I’ll treat him! But you know I can’t promise to save him.”  
  
Warren turned around and widened her eyes at the Healer. “Of course not. We’ll just stay a bit outside the room, so we can make sure that you don’t have any unneeded help.”  
  
The Healer bowed his head, then nodded and swept a hand down the corridor where patients would usually go to wait. “Of course. Come along. I can do the initial Healing by myself, but I’ll need someone to give me a little of their magical strength to replace what I lose in the first spell. That first one’s rather overwhelming.” He looked back and forth between Draco and Warren.  
  
Draco opened his mouth, but he didn’t even get a chance to say the words. “I’ll do it, of course,” Warren said, and only looked at Draco indifferently when Draco glared. “You’re tired yourself, and you don’t like anyone who doesn’t like  _him_. That means that you might not transfer your strength over efficiently.”  
  
Draco couldn’t argue with that, but he wished he could. He followed Warren reluctantly into the depths of the building.  
  
*  
  
Harry opened his eyes and screamed. There was froth in his mouth, and froth in his lungs, and what felt like Dark magic crawling all over him, trying to tighten its net. He remembered the net that Draco had created to steal Ernhardt’s soul, and began to fight furiously, thrashing towards the edge of what felt like a bed.  
  
“Hold him! Hold him!” That was a voice from a shouting green robe, and Harry tensed. If he was near Healers—  
  
“It’s all right, Harry. I promise. I wouldn’t have brought you here if it wasn’t so serious, and we’ve got their promise to help.”  
  
The words sliced and seized through Harry’s skull, and he fell back on the bed, gasping. “You promise?” he whispered, reaching out and seizing Draco’s hand in return. “You  _promise_?”  
  
“Yes, I do.” Draco gazed at him with a strange kind of expression on his face, almost pitiless, and he reached out and gripped Harry’s hand, holding him still and poised. “There’s no reason for me to lie, is there?”  
  
Harry swallowed and shook his head. Then someone cursed him, not personally but in a casual way that said he was interrupting their work, whatever it was, and someone else pressed down on his temple. Harry heard a voice that sounded like Warren’s mutter, “Is there anything you can’t say to him later?”  
  
“No,” Draco said, and retreated.  
  
Harry would have begged him not to leave him alone, but Draco’s hand was in his, and that was enough for now. He gave in to the hands pressing on him and the magic that flowed through his body and slid into sleep.  
  
*  
  
“As far as they can tell, they saved his magic.”  
  
Draco leaned back in his chair and nodded. He felt nearly as drained as Harry, to the point that he thought he  _could_ have spoken to one of the Healers without snapping. But Warren had appointed herself as liaison to the Healers for him, and Draco was just as happy to let her go at it.  
  
“Will they know for sure by the morning?” he muttered, closing his eyes. He felt Harry’s hand in his, and caressed the still, stiff fingers. They didn’t have the telltale coldness that supposedly marked the skin of wizards who had lost his magic, but Draco had never been sure how much he believed in that legend, anyway.   
  
“They will.” Warren paused, and Draco forced his eyes open. She had something she wanted to tell him, or so it seemed. Otherwise, she would have left immediately, probably to make sure that Jenkins hadn’t vanished off the face of the earth.  
  
Warren leaned over the back of the chair and frowned at Draco as if he was a puzzle. She didn’t look much drained by the magic the Healer had taken from her to forge the link with Harry. Draco wondered if she was stronger than most wizards in general. If her flaw was flinging Dark curses, she might be.  
  
“I want to know everything you know about Elder,” Warren said.  
  
Draco blinked. “Not much,” he said. “I worked with him on one case before where he accused me of being Dark. I never thought he would be assigned to the Socrates Corps. He had too many connections and too many people who—I don’t think they  _agreed_ with him, but it was like they thought they should have. As if his standards were something they should aspire to because he was their conscience, or purer than they were.”  
  
Warren’s smile was wintry. “Yes, I have met many people in the past who are content to let someone else serve as their conscience, and in the meantime, they let their own lapse. Why do you think he was assigned to Socrates?”  
  
“For the same reason the rest of us were,” Draco said, watching her. If she thought something different, he couldn’t tell, not from her still face or the way her hands rested on the back of his chair. “Because he fought a twisted and they couldn’t conceal the secret of their existence from him any longer.”  
  
“A popular Auror, whose magic is Light,” Warren murmured softly, as if talking to herself. “And with most people not choosing to acknowledge, or not realizing, that the gifts we have would be flaws in someone insane. I wonder.”  
  
“His magic  _isn’t_ Light,” Draco said. “He just thinks of it that way.”  
  
Warren’s shoulders rose and fell. “In that direction lies a philosophical debate on the nature of magic, and whether anything can be  _truly_ Light if it’s powerful enough, and I don’t care about that. I wondered whether there was any reason they might have assigned him here, other than that.”  
  
“If they wanted to disband the Socrates Corps, they just could.” Draco rubbed at his eyes. “And Harry and I are in enough disgrace that they wouldn’t have to hire someone to discredit the Socrates Corps as an excuse to get rid of us.”  
  
“Who are  _they_?” Warren looked like a baby bird, tilting her head to the side. Draco eyed her wand and decided not to tell her so.  
  
“The Ministry hierarchy,” Draco said. “Anyone who thinks that Elder would drag us down, and  _wants_ us dragged down. The only other person who would have a reason to want us to see us stopped that way is Ernhardt, and he could just spring into one of our bodies and take over.”  
  
“I am inclined to Isla’s view of the matter,” Warren said abruptly, and then straightened. “There must be some reason he hasn’t used his most powerful magic yet, and Macgeorge’s survival in her own body is as good a reason as any.” She clapped Draco on the shoulder. “You should sleep.”  
  
“But who do  _you_  think might be responsible for it, if not the Ministry and not Ernhardt?” Draco asked as she left.  
  
Warren paused and looked over her shoulder at him. “That’s what Simone went to find out,” she said. “And since she hasn’t returned yet, she needs help, and I will go and help her.”  
  
She left, and Draco leaned back, feeling Harry’s hand in his, and shook his head.  
  
They hadn’t died yet. That was the only comfort he had right now.


	14. Notes and Rituals

Harry woke sharply, in the way he had learned to wake after Auror training. Or maybe that was a combination of Auror training and the Horcrux hunt, he thought, rolling over in his bed and reaching quietly for his wand.   
  
His eyes fell on Draco, still asleep in his chair beside the bed, and then on the door of the room. He had wondered for a moment if Ernhardt was in hospital, or one of the Aurors who was particularly hostile to him, but he had to smile—grimly—when he saw a Healer in the doorway, staring at him.  
  
“I didn’t know you would wake up like that,” the Healer said, stepping back. He had dark eyes and hair, and Harry thought he looked older than the Healer who had treated him. Harry had sometimes caught glimpses of that one as he surfaced from having his magical core healed. “Was it something I did?”  
  
“I wake up when someone hostile is near me,” Harry said, and didn’t elaborate. This man wanted him dead. He wouldn’t have woken up otherwise.   
  
Lionel hadn’t believed in that ability, although it had saved his life twice when he and Harry were sleeping outside somewhere, waiting for their prey to emerge. But Harry no longer obsessed over his failures with Lionel, and that meant he could concentrate on the here and now. He watched as the Healer edged into the room. He cast one nervous glance at Draco, and fixed a far more nervous one on Harry.  
  
“I don’t feel hostile towards you,” he said.  
  
Harry smiled, and said nothing. Let the man believe he had soothed Harry. The instincts that had saved Harry’s life more than once, and his partners’, were still more worthy of trust.  
  
The Healer lifted his wand. Harry mimicked the movement at once, and the man paused and sighed. “I was only going to cast some diagnostic charms,” he said, his teeth snapping. “Surely you know that we can’t be sure of what’s wrong with you, or whether your core has healed completely, until we try those.”  
  
“Then cast the charms aloud,” Harry said. “I don’t feel inclined to trust nonverbal spells from Healers right now.”  
  
“You’re in  _hospital_ ,” the man said, loudly enough that Draco stirred in his chair and Harry’s new hatred rose a few quiet levels. “I wouldn’t—you can’t go around suspecting  _everyone_ of constantly getting ready to kill you.”  
  
“I know what I felt, and I know how most Healers feel about me, considering you banned me from St. Mungo’s, and only dire necessity forced you to accept me back,” Harry said. “Go ahead and cast them aloud. I know you can do that, and the spells might be even more powerful that way.” Many wizards never mastered the basics of nonverbal charms, or at least never used them after Hogwarts.  
  
The Healer did some more affronted glaring. Then he began to cast, sniffing along the way and muttering things under his breath about  _some people_ who didn’t understand the sacrifices their caretakers made for them. Harry watched, and only nodded in greeting when Draco put a hand on his arm.  
  
“Do you have to keep the wand out?” Draco murmured from the side of his mouth, his words well-masked by the loud spells.  
  
“Yes,” Harry said. “He woke me when he came into the room, and I woke up with my heart pounding, which is something that only happens when there’s danger near.”  
  
Draco shifted, and for a second, Harry thought he might dispute Harry’s claim, the way Lionel had. But instead, he clasped Harry’s shoulder and leaned into the position that he might need to cast his own spells on the Healer. Harry tilted his head towards him and silently rejoiced in having a partner so perfectly matched to him.  
  
The Healer finally finished his spells and stepped back from the bed, including them both impartially in the glare. “Your magical core is fully healed, Mr. Potter, although you shouldn’t attempt spells of comparable power to the ones that landed you here for at least two days,” he said. “You can go whenever you like.” He snapped his head down and marched towards the door.  
  
“We will,” Draco said, his voice gentle, but nonetheless lethal for all that. “And sooner than otherwise, since we are in a place that does not welcome us.”  
  
The Healer turned back, said, “I have not harmed you,” and walked out, apparently not interested in the arguments to the contrary that Harry and his instincts could have given.  
  
Draco watched the Healer go, then snorted and faced Harry. “How do you feel?” he asked, taking Harry’s hands and kissing the back of the left one, then the right. “You sound better, and I assume that you wouldn’t have tried to pick up the wand if your core wasn’t functioning, but…”  
  
Harry blinked, startled, at his own wand. He had picked it up without thinking about whether the Healers had really repaired his core, simply because there was danger near and picking up a wand was what he  _did._  But now he could feel the humming beneath the surface of his skin, the quiet readiness to strike or lunge, and he nodded. “I have my magic back, and I think we  _can_ leave whenever we want.”  
  
“Good.” Draco stood up and leaned over to put his hands on Harry’s shoulders, murmuring into his ear. “Jenkins took Elder somewhere to find out what she could about his assignment to the Socrates Corps. Warren left to find her and help her, I think. I don’t know why neither of them have come to fetch us in the hours since then, but I don’t think it can be good.”  
  
Harry swallowed. “Yes,” he said. “Or maybe whoever was behind Elder being hired delayed them. We should go and find them.” He hopped out of bed, not pleased when he staggered, but pleased when he managed to stand on his own after only a few seconds of Draco’s support.  
  
“Ministry first?” suggested Draco, steering them towards the door.  
  
Harry nodded. “I don’t see where else we can go, if Warren hasn’t come back or firecalled you or anything of the sort.”  
  
Draco paused for a second when they came out of the door into the corridor, but when Harry peered about, it seemed to be more because of the general presence of Healers than anything else. He glanced over his shoulder to Harry and nodded once, silently, impressively, before they got moving. Harry felt his lips quivering, although he clamped them firmly shut so he didn’t do anything stupid like start laughing. If Draco didn’t have his theatrics, then he wouldn’t be Draco.  
  
They halted so abruptly in the middle of the corridor leading to the stairs that Harry winced as he slammed into Draco’s back. Draco lifted his wand and hissed, a barely noticeable sound that made Harry try to interpret Parseltongue sounds in it for a second before he shook his head and leaned around Draco.  
  
“What?” he demanded, when he could see nothing but more corridor, and Draco standing there and staring at nothing.  
  
“Someone used Dark magic here, and recently,” Draco said. He rubbed his left arm for a moment, then glanced back at Harry. “I’m unwilling to walk into a trap, but—you haven’t had a vision since you woke up?”  
  
“Not since the clearing,” Harry said, gentling his voice a little when he saw how tightly Draco’s lips were pinched. “No, Draco. I’m positive. I don’t know what was used here. We might be walking into a trap. But neither of us is going to die in the next few seconds.”  
  
Draco stood there long enough that Harry thought he might make them go back, but then he shook his head and proceeded. Harry scanned the walls while Draco looked ahead, and that was why Harry saw the small square of parchment pinned to the wall. He called Draco’s attention to it, and Draco used his wand to float it free of the Sticking Charm that appeared to hold it there.  
  
 _We have forgotten._  
  
Draco’s hand trembled as he held the parchment. Harry glanced quickly between it and his face. “What does it mean?” he asked. The words didn’t sound familiar as a signature, and he couldn’t remember a time that Ernhardt had used “we” in his messages.  
  
“The handwriting is my mother’s,” Draco whispered.  
  
Harry took the lead after that, though Draco made a few ineffectual attempts to get Harry to stay behind him. At this point, Harry simply didn’t care. He was the more powerful one, and the one better able to handle murder attempts when Draco was shaking like a leaf and staring at the note in his hand.  
  
But no one so much as glanced at them as they made their way down the stairs and out the front of the hospital. Perhaps the Healers had suggested to each other that they ignore their unwelcome guests, Harry thought. Draco had already told him about the ruse that he and Warren had used to make the Healers treat Harry. If no one was responsible for Harry getting injured while in hospital, then they must think they wouldn’t be responsible for making him leave, either.  
  
The note remained on his mind, but Harry tried not to let Draco to see him thinking about it as they made their way into the street, and to an Apparition point that they could use to return to the Ministry. So his parents had forgotten about Draco. They had  _tried_ to forget about Draco, of course; that was the point of that absurd letter declaring they were separating themselves from him forever.  
  
Which meant someone else had had to write the letter, or at least leave it, if Narcissa Malfoy had written it before she underwent the memory modification. Someone who wouldn’t alarm the Healers, someone who could use Dark magic without alerting the people around him. Harry doubted even they would have felt it if not for the sensitivity of Draco’s flaw.  
  
No matter how he turned it around in his mind, Harry couldn’t come up with a way to make Draco’s parents relent and accept him back as their son. He  _had_ to come up with a means to solve the problem, though. Draco wanted to stay a Malfoy. And what Draco wanted, Harry would dedicate his life to providing.  
  
When he felt Draco’s hand on his shoulder, though, he remembered that they had another problem—that of Elder and a Ministry that distrusted them—that was almost more intractable than the Malfoys. He turned around, folded close in Draco’s arms, and let Draco Apparate them the way he insisted without making a murmur of protest. The more magic he saved now, the bigger a threat he could be to their enemies in the near future.  
  
*  
  
The pointed stares and the whispers that pursued them as they moved through the corridors of the Ministry were so usual that Draco ignored them with more aplomb than he could often muster. No one seemed to know about Rudie’s disappearance, or that they had let Ernhardt escape. There would be accusing looks among the stares, open laughter rather than snickers, if that was the case.  
  
They reached the Socrates office and found Warren seated at her desk, arms folded before her and head pillowed on them, asleep. But she sat up and reached for her wand quickly enough when they stepped inside. She eyed them coolly, seemed to read and accept their presence for some reason known only to herself, and put away her wand with a light little snort.   
  
“You didn’t have any success?” Harry asked.  
  
“That depends on what you mean by success,” Warren said. “We didn’t manage to find out who had assigned Elder to the Corps. The minute Simone returned with him, several of the senior Aurors from Lucretius Corps called her in and started to interrogate her about what had happened. They told her someone would take charge of Elder. But when she finally escaped from them, Elder had vanished. No one seemed to know who she meant when she asked after him.” Warren spread her hands. “At least he won’t be working with us again.”  
  
Draco nodded, although from the glance he exchanged with Harry, he knew he wasn’t the only one to feel uneasy about where Elder had gone and what he had done now. An unknown faction in the Ministry had assigned him to the Socrates Corps; it was only natural that the same unknown faction would protect him when he got in trouble.   
  
Maybe it  _was_ an improvement, though. If they could track down Ernhardt and Rudie, there was the chance that Elder wouldn’t be right there to mess up the capture and make sure Ernhardt escaped them again.  
  
“Have you heard any news about Rudie?” Draco asked, since Harry was silent as though still thinking over the implications and their own interrogation seemed to be up to him.  
  
Warren shook her head. “Simone had to sleep off her magical and physical exhaustion, but she said that she knew a spell that might be able to give us a hint.” She hesitated, then added, “It would involve a sacrifice.”  
  
“Anyone we know?” Draco asked, purely for the way the question made Harry move protestingly at his side. The sharp smile that crossed Warren’s face was an unexpected benefit, but well worth it.  
  
“Luckily,” Warren said, reaching into her desk, “it requires a sacrifice of objects, physical possessions, and not life. But we will need to shed blood, and you will need to choose something that matters to you.”   
  
Draco grimaced. He could think of a few possessions with the Malfoy crest that he’d been able to bring with him when he was kicked out of the house, and that was the logical choice. If his parents had their wish, he would never have the chance to use them again anyway. “I assume that we need a special place for this ritual, as well.”  
  
Warren nodded. “A protected place. Simone has a sanctuary added to her house, a room where she planned to retreat in case the Ministry ever became—unreasonable.”   
  
“Decided to hunt her down as twisted,” Draco knew, was the meaning that lay between the lines. The Ministry’s definitions were arbitrary enough that they might easily be wrenched around to accommodate members of Socrates Corps, especially if anyone learned as much about their flaws as they knew.  
  
“I still have to think about what to sacrifice,” Harry muttered. Draco looked at him in time to see him rolling his wand between his fingers.  
  
Draco reached out and stilled his hands. “Well, not your wand, anyway,” he said. “You still need magic to hunt Ernhardt down.”  
  
Harry looked up and smiled at him, his hands uncurling. “That’s true. I have—there are some photographs of Lionel that might suit. Not all of them, but a few.”  
  
Draco had to smile despite himself. If Harry had chosen the objects to appease Draco as well as for their emotional content, then he couldn’t have picked better. He nodded. “Significant enough, I’d think,” he said, and turned to Warren.  
  
Warren was cradling a rather battered black leather book between her hands. “This is a diary that I kept during the first years I was in the Aurors,” she explained, holding it up. “I kept a record of the cases I solved, the fights I had with my partners, and how many times I expected promotions and the Ministry denied me. I stopped keeping it when I joined Socrates Corps. I discovered that no one rises up from here, that this is the cellar.” She smiled faintly at the diary. “And I found the best partner I’m ever going to have. Our rows aren’t the sorts of things I’d like to write down anyway.”  
  
Draco wondered idly at the fact that all the items they’d chosen came from their pasts, before they joined Socrates Corps—not that anyone else would have noticed the coincidence yet, since he hadn’t mentioned what he was going to contribute. “Then is there any reason to stay here?” he asked Warren.  
  
Warren shook her head. “I’ll have to Apparate you, because I’m the only one Simone trusts with the coordinates.”  
  
“That’s fine,” Draco murmured, a little stunned by how much he had come to trust Warren and Jenkins in the few days they’d been working together. But Warren had helped him get Harry into hospital when he would have died without Healers’ treatment. He owed her something for that, and it might as well be trust.  
  
Warren raised her eyebrows as though she had heard his thought and had her own doubts about it, and left the office with a sweep of her cloak. Draco hastened after her. Harry kept close at his side, turning his head as though he wanted a last glimpse of the office.   
  
 _Not that it will be the last,_ Draco assured himself firmly. If his parents had rejected him, then his future lay with the Aurors more firmly than ever. He would come back. He wouldn’t let the Ministry, or Elder, or their lack of success on this case, drive him out of the place he had earned.  
  
Harry’s hand fell on his shoulder as though he’d heard the thoughts. Draco smiled down at him.   
  
 _Or drive me away from Harry, either. If there’s another place I’ve earned, that’s the one, at his side._  
  
*  
  
After quick stops at each of their homes so that Harry could retrieve his photographs of Lionel and Draco could pick up a small bundle stamped with the Malfoy crest, they made the last Side-Along Apparition and arrived at a half-buried cottage in a gloomy, dripping pine forest. Harry blinked up and around, then shook his head.  
  
“Something wrong?” Draco murmured to him as he pushed Harry busily along in front of him, towards the door of the cottage.  
  
“It’s not the sort of place I pictured Jenkins living,” Harry saw no reason not to admit. The roof of the cottage was tiled and tilted, and water sang softly all around them as it gurgled off the eaves and onto the ground.  
  
“Not Dark enough?” Warren smiled briefly at them as she took a key out of her pocket and held it up. Harry started to object they were too far from the door for the key to work, but there was a flash and click in the air, as if the key was entering a lock. Warren dropped it into her pocket a moment later, and gestured for them to walk ahead.  
  
“Not dangerous enough,” Harry said.  
  
Warren raised her eyebrows. “You don’t know as much about my partner as you think you do,” she said, and stepped up to the door in a few quick movements, knocking on it and calling softly. Jenkins opened it immediately, and she and Warren were soon talking, too softly for Harry to make out what they were saying.  
  
“I wonder how much we ought to trust them,” Harry murmured, leaning back to speak into Draco’s ear. “They just happen to know a ritual that might allow us to find Rudie and Ernhardt? Why didn’t they use it before?”  
  
“They probably didn’t want to use it.” Draco looked at the package in his hand, then back at Harry. “It’s not going to be easy for me to sacrifice the things I brought from the Manor, and I imagine it wouldn’t be easy for you to give up those photographs, whatever you’re pretending.”  
  
“Then don’t give up what you value,” Harry said softly, reaching out and closing his hand over Draco’s fingers. “No one said that we  _all_ had to participate in the ritual. Keep these things.”  
  
“Are you ready?”   
  
That was Jenkins. She was leaning out the door of her house, giving them a glance that seemed to see through their bodies to their hearts. Harry stood up straight just as Draco closed his hand over Harry’s shoulder and gave it a little shake.  
  
“I told you to stop being such a martyr about things,” Draco muttered into his ear. “Yes, I’m sure that I want to do this. I always was. We’re fine,” he added, raising his voice so Warren and Jenkins could hear him. “As long as you’re sure that these wards on your hidden room will be strong enough to protect us from the notice of the Ministry.”  
  
“I’m sure.” Jenkins held what looked like a ring on a silver chain, swinging it idly back and forth. “And when the ritual is complete, we should be carried swiftly enough to the place that Ernhardt and Rudie currently are.” She smiled slightly, raising her eyebrows. “Think about what spells you’ll use when that happens. Always best to be prepared.”  
  
Draco’s hand tightened on Harry’s shoulder again. Harry nodded his thanks for the warning, but as they swept through the door into Jenkins’s dark little house and she herded them towards an even smaller and darker door at the back, he didn’t think he really needed it.  
  
*  
  
Draco had never seen a room exactly like Jenkins’s sanctuary. It was darker than he had thought it would be, and Darker, with wards around it that made his Mark sting. But the most interesting thing about it was the circles.  
  
There was a circle set in the middle of the floor, one that glowed like fire, although Draco suspected it was mostly made of copper. There was a circle around the edges of the ceiling, touching all four corners, so that no matter where you walked in the room, you were inside it. There was a circle around the outside of the one in the middle of the floor, and smaller circles patterned on single stones in the walls.   
  
Draco wondered what kinds of forces Jenkins needed to keep from bursting out of control, and then dismissed the idea. He didn’t think he wanted to know. They weren’t here to investigate Jenkins’s secrets, anyway. Draco trusted her enough to conduct this ritual that would take them to Ernhardt and Rudie, and that was all he needed.  
  
Jenkins took a position on the west side of the central circle in the middle of the floor. With nods, she directed Warren to the eastern side, opposite her, Harry to the north, and Draco to the south.  
  
Draco restrained the impulse to say that he should be in the north, because Harry was more fiery of spirit than he was and belonged in the south. For all he knew, that wasn’t the symbolism Jenkins was using. He did his best to relax his shoulders, standing still until Jenkins motioned for him to open the bundle that contained his Malfoy possessions: a stamped diary with the seal that his father had given him for his tenth birthday, a signet ring, and a wand sheath marked with the Malfoy crest from one of the storage rooms that he used to gaze at and touch for hours, since it had supposedly belonged to his grandfather Abraxas.  
  
“You don’t need to sacrifice  _all_ that,” Jenkins said abruptly, eyeing Draco’s bundle. “Just the ring will do.”  
  
To complement Jenkins’s ring, Draco thought, and laid the rest of his bundle aside with a small sigh. The sheath and the diary were dearer to him than the ring.  
  
Jenkins studied them all for a moment, and then said, “We can’t stop once the ritual begins. The circle seals itself, and we can’t escape it. Do you understand?”  
  
Harry nodded. Draco made sure of that before he nodded himself. Warren, of course, was already waiting, watching her partner with perfect trust.  
  
“Good,” Jenkins said, and the ritual began. 


	15. Confrontations

The ritual welled around him. Harry found himself wrinkling his nose as a deep stink, like rotting fruit, rose up with the power. He reckoned it was part of the ritual’s magic and he couldn’t do anything to change it, but it was still disgusting. He bit the inside of his cheek so he wouldn’t complain and prevent the ritual from succeeding.   
  
The flow of power among them was complex, from what Harry could follow, but on the other hand, he hadn’t been out of hospital for long. Maybe someone else would feel that it was less complex. He didn’t know.  
  
Jenkins controlled it, of course, since she was the one who knew the ritual, guiding her hands back and forth the way Harry had sometimes seen a Muggle conductor do on the telly. The magic bubbled out of the cauldron that sat at her feet, into which she’d cast the silver ring on its chain. Harry wondered if they would ever know the significance of the ring, and doubted it. Warren might not have told them about why her diary mattered except that they needed some reassurance before they performed the ritual.  
  
Whatever reassurance Harry and Draco needed, though, Warren didn’t. She raised her hands and lowered them when Jenkins looked at her, and, when Jenkins caught her eye and nodded, held her wand to her hand at the base of her thumb. A murmur, and a small slice opened there. The drops of blood hung, glittering, for just a second before the magic flowing through the air caught them and funneled them towards the cauldron. Harry coughed and spit at the coppery taste in her mouth, wondering if it was possible to breathe in blood fumes from this distance.  
  
Draco gave him a significant look even as he took the signet ring from his finger. Harry suspected Jenkins would turn to him next.  
  
Harry glared back. He knew what he had to do, and he had agreed to this ritual, Dark magic and blood magic and all. He was just allowed to  _cough,_ that was all, if fumes got into his nostrils and made him sick.  
  
At least, he thought he was. Sometimes Draco’s notion of what they should do was too different from Harry’s for reconciliation.  
  
Jenkins closed her eyes and waved her hands harder than ever as Warren’s blood settled into the cauldron. Her lips moved so fast that all Harry heard was a blurred stream of sound, not so much an incantation as a hum.  
  
Well, in one way, that might be a good thing. If the Ministry asked him later what the incantations and gestures of this ritual were, Harry would be able to answer honestly that he had no idea.  
  
The cauldron seethed and hissed and bubbled at them again, and Jenkins thrust out one hand in Draco’s direction. Apparently he wasn’t worth a nod, or else she had to keep her eyes closed and her concentration on the cauldron in front of her.  
  
Draco didn’t seem offended, which amazed Harry. He performed the same spell that Warren had done, cutting his hand at the base of his thumb, and turned his palm towards Jenkins. The blood rose into the air in a cascade this time, whirling around and around itself like dust in sunlight, and then dived into the cauldron. Peering at it as much as he could without moving from his place in the circle, Harry thought he saw the potion—or whatever it was—that Jenkins was brewing turn a sharper, ruddier color.  
  
Jenkins’s eyes flicked open, and she turned to Harry.  
  
Harry hesitated a bare second—he had expected to have at least the same length of time between her calling on Draco and calling on him that there had been between Draco and Warren—and Jenkins hissed at him, her lips wrinkling back to give a glimpse of teeth that were pretty impressive for just being dull and human.  
  
Harry shook his head and cut his hand at the base of his thumb. The blood glowed for a moment as though reluctant to fall, but the magic had already snatched it and was transporting it, reluctance and all, across the room to the cauldron. Harry shuffled in place in the circle, almost holding his breath, and not because of the copper taste in his mouth this time. Would it work right away? And what  _was_ supposed to happen, anyway? Other than telling them they would have to sacrifice blood and treasures, Jenkins hadn’t made clear much about the ritual.  
  
Jenkins stretched her hands out in front of her and snapped them close to her body, as though she was pulling shut the door of a car.  
  
The diary flew out of Warren’s hands, and the photographs out of Harry’s. The ring spun out of Draco’s fingers and rose above the others as the point of a triangle formed by the objects. Harry looked back at the cauldron to see whether Jenkins’s ring would rise, too, and found her with her lips moving and her head bobbing a little. No, he reckoned the ring had been the sacrifice to get the ritual going, and wouldn’t join the others now.  
  
Then Jenkins laid her hands flat in front of her and began to push, as though she was trying to shove together a great mass of something soft and fluffy.  
  
Harry gritted his teeth. Resistance had entered the room, as thick and sticky as milk poured all over everything. He shook his head several times, and each time, Jenkins made a noise in the back of her throat, so Harry stopped doing it.  
  
The hairs on his arms rose. Draco was swearing under his breath, but he didn’t move away or break the circle, so Harry assumed that wasn’t an option for him, either. Harry stayed still. Whatever his partner had to endure, Harry would endure with him.  
  
Jenkins’s hands continued to rise and tremble, but Harry still couldn’t see anything between them. Yet they relentlessly, slowly, traveled closer and closer together. Jenkins gritted her own teeth and began repeating the same incantation over and over, as Harry could tell from the rhythm. He really couldn’t tell what it meant, though, whether it was Latin or something else, and he wasn’t about to force Jenkins to tell him.  
  
Jenkins bowed her head, her lungs heaving in and out as though she was breathing the invisible stuff she was trying to push around, and then brought her hands together in one final, agonizing clap.  
  
The room shuddered around them. Harry thought he saw the walls bounce and the wards stretch themselves out in flat, shimmering currents of magic that got interrupted by the walls coming down. He winced. He disliked the image of them suddenly bared to the peering eyes of the Ministry.  
  
But if that had happened, it must have been too short a time for the Aurors to find the place, because Jenkins moved back, gasping, and held up something round and silvery. Harry realized for the first time that the cauldron had vanished, and so had the objects, their sacrifices, that had hung in midair. All that was left was this flat, shiny silver disk in Jenkins’s hands, and she was gazing at it with her mouth set in a slash like a knife wound.  
  
“What is that?” Draco asked. Harry was glad that he had asked, because he wouldn’t have wanted to brave the expression on Jenkins’s face for himself.  
  
Jenkins looked up and blinked a little at Draco as though she had forgotten who he was or why he mattered. Then she shrugged and wrapped her fingers harder around the disk. “The tracking medallion that will take us to Ernhardt and Rudie,” she said.  
  
“I thought the ritual would take us there right away,” Draco continued, and Harry nodded. He didn’t know if he should have performed the ritual so soon after being in hospital. Now his head was heavy, and his footsteps dragged.  
  
“It would have if we had more power,” Jenkins said, “or if Ernhardt was less strong. But we have no idea where he is, save that wherever it is, it has wards.” She lifted the medallion. “Or we would be there by now. Come up and hold onto my arms,” she added.  
  
Warren was perhaps the only one who did that eagerly, Harry thought. Draco came slowly, and so did Harry. But Jenkins held her arms out so they could touch her without bumping into each other, and then raised the medallion higher. There was a triangle etched on the front, Harry saw, and a ruby that resembled an eye.  
  
Jenkins gave the same slow, hissing, half-incantation that she had used at the beginning of the ritual. The room around them began to blur and move, mist rising. Harry swallowed when he saw it.  
  
The mist closed in on them.   
  
Harry felt the same thick, coppery taste invade his mouth again. He swallowed and swallowed, and resisted the urge to spit. God knew what that would do to the magical mist they were standing in, and they had come far enough that any disaster that fucked it up could cost Rudie her life.  
  
 _If she isn’t already dead._  
  
He was glad Draco was there beside him, leaning close to his side, his words a soft, bare murmur in Harry’s ear. Harry couldn’t hear him under the chanting that Jenkins was doing, but he was there, ready to step in if Harry had some kind of fainting fit, the way it felt as if he would, and that was enough.  
  
*  
  
Draco saw the mist begin to fade and thin before it cleared. Tatters of silver crawled along the walls, and he smiled a bit grimly as he saw the stone through them. Jenkins’s medallion had taken them from one underground spot to another. That made sense; Ernhardt would avoid a manor house, probably, after the last two that they had effectively destroyed.  
  
Something darted at Draco, silent and fast.  
  
Draco leaped in the air and turned around to face it, his wand jabbing as he hissed an incantation that he’d had ready on his tongue from the second the mist started clearing up. Something roared into his ear, long and indignant. Draco didn’t care. He had hit whatever it was that had aimed at them, and Harry was moving into position against his back, and every moment the mist cleared more and he saw more of where they were.  
  
A cave, he deduced from quick glances, some of it natural and some sculpted, perhaps part of a mine that had been shut down. The walls ran smooth for some distance, and then abruptly shrank and turned into a twisting tunnel. The color of the stone was a dull grey with streaks of brown and black.  
  
And the only light around or with them came from flaring blue torches jammed into the stone.  
  
Draco remembered reading once about flames burning blue in the presence of necromancy. He lifted his wand and cast a Shield Charm in front of him just as something else slammed into it, although it was so small this time that he thought he wouldn’t have had to worry about it unless it had poison on its teeth.  
  
When he realized it was a skeletal bat with a mouthful of rotting flesh, he decided that a bite from it might have been of some concern after all.  
  
Harry shouted from behind him, and tried to move. Draco had no idea whether it was to move away to face an enemy or to try and get protection for Draco, and he didn’t like either possibility. He turned with Harry, moving the shield at the same time, and saw the thing that Harry was fighting.  
  
It resembled a bear as much as it did anything else. It had huge bones, joined with a sliding tissue of white-pink flesh, and its jaws were grotesque and enormous. With skin plopping off it at every move, it roared and struck out at Harry with clumsy paws.  
  
Harry had already used a spell that scorched the bones, Draco saw, leaving long, lightning-like grooves down the sides of them. Well, that would have been enough with most ordinary opponents, but Draco doubted this thing was going to be ordinary. Perhaps it could even resist most of the magic that an Auror might use. And Harry was still too weak to use the spells that he might have before he went into hospital.  
  
Draco touched his wand to the bear’s chest as it tried to bull its way forwards, snapping at Harry with fangs that looked as if they would detach from its jaw at any second and pierce skin and flesh like arrows. “ _Frango_ ,” he said calmly.  
  
The bones blew apart, and so did something dark and rotted-purple in the middle of its chest, something that looked like a heart. The bones collapsed, and the tissue clinging to the bear stopped moving, other than the ordinary dripping it would do when it was detached from the bone. Draco stepped back, with a harsh breath and a nod at Harry. “You’re all right?” he murmured.  
  
“I’m fine.” Harry was examining the bear. “I think…I know that Macgeorge would raise creatures out of bones alone. Every time that we’ve seen the things Ernhardt would launch at us, they’ve had some sort of flesh on them. Do you think that’s because he’s not as skilled a necromancer as she was?”  
  
Draco frowned and shook his head. “Or more skilled? Wouldn’t it take more skill to raise a body that wasn’t all decayed to bone?”  
  
“I think this is a question that you can debate later.”  
  
Draco started and turned around. Jenkins stood behind him, a litter of bones at her feet that looked to be all that remained of some bats that had attacked her. Jenkins wasn’t breathing hard, but there was a tightness to her jaw that made Draco look for Warren. If she’d disappeared again, God knew what Jenkins would do.  
  
Warren, though, stood on the other side of the cavern, beside a thin line in the stone that looked like a concealed door. “That was only the welcoming committee,” she said over her shoulder. “Left here to take care of anyone who might show up. I know Ernhardt is behind this thing.”  
  
“Then open it,” Jenkins said, with a rumble in the back of her voice. Draco took a step nearer her. Despite all the bragging she’d done about the way her flaw locked her mind and Ernhardt couldn’t take it over, she looked now as though he was trying. Her eyes were more than half-shut, and her hand groped in front of her to feel the air.  
  
“What’s wrong, Simone?” Warren hadn’t moved, except to lean a little harder on the stone where the hidden door apparently was.  
  
“I don’t—know.”  
  
Draco noticed Harry come up on the other side of Jenkins, level with Draco himself. They didn’t need to talk at a time like this, Draco thought. A flicker of eyelids was enough, and a nod. If something happened to Jenkins, if they saw the slightest flicker of blue in her eyes, then they would spring. Ernhardt taking over Jenkins might be even more devastating than him taking over Macgeorge, not so much because of her flaw as because of her general skill with a wand and knowledge of Dark spells.  
  
Then Jenkins opened her eyes with a gasp. “So that’s what it’s like to have him reach into your mind,” she said, and smiled grimly as her hands tightened on her wand. “I can see why it’s hard to resist. The voice whispers about treasures and secrets and promises, and makes it seem as though possession would be the same as falling asleep. As if you could have what  _you_ wanted instead of him having what he wants.”  
  
“You did resist,” Draco said, studying her. No one else who’d been possessed had ever managed to hide the blue eyes, although sometimes people who didn’t know what they were looking for might mistake it for a natural color. “Your flaw?”  
  
Jenkins gave him the look Draco thought she would reserve for something found crawling on the ground. “I  _did_ tell you,” she said, and faced Warren. “How soon until you can open the door?”  
  
“It seems to be locked with the same necromantic wards that Rudie sprang on the door of his last house,” Warren said. Her eyes were shut, her wand moving in front of her like the rods Draco had seen some wizards use to sense water. “If I watched her closely enough, then I think—yes, here.”  
  
There was the same hissing sound they’d heard when Rudie opened the door of the skull-house, and then a tension Draco hadn’t realized was crowding the cavern relaxed abruptly, like lightning leaving the sky after a storm. Warren nodded and stood back. “That’s the way it works.”  
  
“She managed to memorize the way to do that after watching Rudie do it  _once_ ,” Harry muttered behind Draco.  
  
Draco nodded. More and more likely, it seemed as though Warren’s flaw and genius  _had_ to be Dark spells. Picking them up this fast was unnatural.  
  
“How do we know if Rudie’s dead or not?” Harry asked, loudly enough for Jenkins and Warren to hear him. “The spell was supposed to bring us to her, but we don’t know if she’s still here, or if it’s her body.”  
  
“Ernhardt may as easily have kept her to negotiate with as a hostage,” Jenkins said calmly. “I don’t believe there’s any way we  _can_ know, until we go in and see her alive or dead. At least we know that Ernhardt is not a skilled enough necromancer to reanimate a corpse and make it seem as if it was alive.”  
  
“I wonder why that is,” Draco murmured. He was thinking of the twisted made by Healer Alto, whom Ernhardt had possessed when he wanted to kill her. They had seemed fully able to use their gifts, or rather, Ernhardt had been able to fully use their gifts when he was in their bodies.  
  
“We can hope that Rudie was right after all,” Harry said.  
  
“Or  _not_ hope,” Draco said flatly. “Because if Macgeorge is still alive in there, I have to admit that I haven’t the slightest idea of how to rescue her. Do you?”  
  
Harry didn’t respond, but his face settled into a mulish expression that Draco recognized. Harry was likely to come up with inspired plans when he looked like that, and also to come up with mental things to do that would paralyze Draco’s heart.  
  
Draco caught his arm low down, where the vicious pinch he gave Harry wouldn’t show up to Jenkins and Warren unless Harry flinched, and hissed into his ear, “You aren’t to risk your life to rescue her. Especially when we have no idea whether it’s possible. We can try to kill Ernhardt and give her her body back, but considering how close we came to killing him last time and how we failed, I don’t know how we would do that.”  
  
Harry just nodded, eyes flat. Draco gave up. He knew that meant Harry was listening more to the promptings of his own hero complex than anything else at the moment, and he would just have to hope that having three other experienced Aurors on the case, as well as Draco to protect, would keep Harry grounded.  
  
“Is there any way you can try the spell that would rip Ernhardt’s soul from his body again?” Jenkins asked Draco.  
  
Draco glanced at her sharply. “You don’t mind Dark magic like that?” he asked, when neither she nor Warren did anything but look back at him.  
  
“You know we don’t mind Dark magic in general,” Jenkins said. “Since you have seen us use it. So it is the words  _like that_ that are the important ones in your formulation, I would suppose.”  
  
Draco nodded. It felt as though his neck was going to rip itself apart from tension.  
  
“Not all of us are Elder,” Jenkins said. “Not all of us have the luxury of dealing with the world in true Dark and Light terms.” She turned back to the door. “We should go through, and deal with what lies on the other side.”  
  
“I wanted to ask you—” Warren began.  
  
“No,” Jenkins said, although when Warren stared at her, Draco could see the softening along her jawline. No, he didn’t think Jenkins and Warren were lovers, unlike him and Harry, but they were deeply in tune. “We failed with the Joining Circle once before. I don’t think we should use it this time, and give Ernhardt time to interrupt it.”  
  
After a moment, Warren nodded back. Then she faced the door, and tossed it open.  
  
Only blackness lay beyond, which made Draco feel silly for how tense his muscles had automatically got as he waited for something to jump out. He shook his head and started forwards.  
  
Warren was in the lead, Jenkins beside Draco, Harry just behind. Even with Harry only slowly recovering from the draining of his magical core, Draco could  _hope_ it was enough power to take on Ernhardt and destroy him.  
  
 _Perhaps._  
  
*  
  
Harry’s skin prickled as he stepped through the low door into the room that waited beyond. It was probably only nerves, he told himself. He didn’t know what Ernhardt had waiting for them, but although he had come close to killing them, he hadn’t managed to even permanently injure them so far.  
  
That thought wasn’t as reassuring as he had planned for it to be.  
  
The room beyond was a lot larger than the small cavern they had emerged in; Harry knew that already from the echoes that bounced in front of them. There was a long, silent debate between Draco and Warren that Harry saw mostly as the movement of wands, and then _Lumos_ Charms beamed from all of them. Harry cast nonverbally, his glance darting around, trying to take in any enemies that might come at Draco.   
  
There seemed to be nothing. The room was still disgusting, strung with huge silken curtains of what looked like cobwebs, but no one moved in it, and none of the skeletal or rotting creatures that had welcomed them on the other side.  
  
Draco breathed into Harry’s ear, “Do you see any shadows that might be cast by glamour charms?”  
  
Harry nodded back. They had investigated one report of an apparent twisted together that had turned out to be only a Dark wizard clever with glamour charms that made him seem to disappear. “Let’s see,” he said, and threw a  _Finite_ at the darkest corner of the cave, across from them.  
  
There was a long, sucking sound, and the shadow vanished, revealing a stairway that plunged into the earth. It looked broader but no more inviting than the one leading down to the cellar in Cuthbert’s Corner had.  
  
“Do we go down?” Jenkins asked after several more seconds. Harry felt Draco’s breathing speed up beside him. All of them had been expecting some sort of attack before now, Harry was certain.  
  
“We go down,” Draco said firmly. “Where else should we go?” And he marched towards the stairs, casting charms before him as he went that would find glamours, hexes, and tripwires at a knee height.  
  
Harry followed him, his neck prickling endlessly all the way down, and down, and down.


	16. Down, in the Dark

The steps were humming beneath their feet, as Harry became aware of a few minutes later. It felt as though there was a waterfall going under the stone, and they were receiving some of the energy coming up through the stairs.  
  
Draco stopped ahead of him, and Harry leaned forwards until his head was right next to Draco’s ear. “You feel it, too,” he whispered.  
  
Draco nodded. “I don’t know what it is,” he said, without turning his head, but continuing down the stairs. “If Ernhardt has enough magic to do this, then he has more than I ever knew he did.”  
  
Harry nodded, in silence. From what he could tell, Ernhardt hadn’t used wand magic to fight them any time since he’d taken Macgeorge’s body. It was either necromancy or, possibly, possession, the way he had reached out to Jenkins when they were standing in the first cavern the ritual had brought them to. Harry wondered if he didn’t think wand magic powerful enough for the job, and preferred to rely on his flaws.  
  
Or perhaps he had been saving it all for this place, this final sanctuary. Harry didn’t think he would run again. He had to face them here, or face them nowhere.  
  
The stairs began to wind around in tight spirals, and Harry quit paying so much attention to the thrum under their feet and wished for a railing instead. He had his wand ready in his hand, to cushion falls if anyone should have one, but it wasn’t a pleasant thought that another swarm of bats might attack them here and kill them before they could ever get into battle with Ernhardt.  
  
As it happened, that  _didn’t_ happen. They reached the bottom of the staircase and stepped off into more darkness, and silence. Even the  _Lumos_ Charms didn’t reach very far into the shadows, and Harry didn’t think that had much to do with the room’s size.  
  
Draco winced, suddenly, and Harry saw the shadow of his right hand reaching for his left arm. “Dark magic,” Draco murmured. “As bad as that flaw on the last case, when Bainbridge would skin someone.”  
  
Harry opened his mouth to reply, but he didn’t get the chance. Someone was moving forwards to meet them, someone who walked through the shadows without a care for concealment, and then stopped just outside the range of Jenkins’s wand and smiled at them.  
  
“Welcome,” she said. “My master thought you would reach this place in time, but he didn’t expect you to reach it so quickly. His compliments on your intelligence.”  
  
It was Rudie. Rudie without blue eyes, but torn robes that she didn’t give a fuck about, obviously, and Rudie with a red film over her eyes, and a cocked head that made her seem to be listening for a command.  
  
“He would do that, the bastard,” Draco said, so softly that Harry had trouble hearing him.  
  
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear what you said,” Rudie said, shuffling around to face them, her neck bobbing like she was a pigeon pecking up seed. “You should speak up, you know. My master listens through my ears, but he can’t reach beyond my senses to find out what you’re saying. More’s the pity, it would save him trouble.”  
  
Harry had never seen Draco’s face so still. He reached out for a moment as though he would take Rudie by the throat, and then let his hand drop back again. He was smiling, Harry saw, his eyes fixed on Rudie’s as though he could see the real person behind the red film. “Do you mind telling me how your master managed to take you?” Draco asked, in as sweet and coaxing a tone as he sometimes used to tell Harry to go to bed. “I thought he couldn’t touch someone’s mind without turning their eyes blue, but yours are a much prettier color than that.”  
  
Rudie laughed. “Silly. He made me swallow his blood. And what color is blood?”  
  
 _He fed her his blood, and activated her flaw, the same way Draco thought he’d done in the lab in Cuthbert’s Corner,_ Harry thought, and squeezed Draco’s hand.  
  
Draco showed no sign that he was upset or afraid, the way Harry had thought he would. He only nodded, his eyes calm and wide and intelligent. “Do you have any brothers or sisters who might show up here?”  
  
Rudie blinked at him. “I don’t have any siblings, not now. What are you talking about?”  
  
 _More servants,_ Harry translated without trouble.  _More twisted that Ernhardt enslaved by feeding them his blood._  
  
But Rudie didn’t seem to know about them, which meant she might not understand the reference—or Ernhardt might not. Harry wondered how much Rudie knew, and how much Ernhardt was in control of her mind and also controlling  _what_ she knew at any particular time.  
  
“Never mind,” Draco said, and waved his hand airily. “I’m somewhat surprised to receive your master’s welcome when until only a few minutes ago we were hunting him, but I suppose that’s his business who he wants to extend it to.”  
  
It was so neatly and smoothly done that it surprised even Harry, who stood so close to Draco’s right side. His wand flickered, and Rudie slid down, unconscious from the Stunner that had caught her in the chest. Draco stepped forwards and caught her in his arms so she wouldn’t fall on the floor, then laid her gently on the floor.  
  
“Why did you do that?” Jenkins spoke in a quiet, friendly way, but Harry had long since decided that that didn’t matter. “We could have learned more about how Ernhardt had enslaved her if we left her awake.”  
  
“We would only have heard lies,” Draco said, and stepped back, fussing with the hang of his cloak around his neck. Harry heard a few faint clinking noises, and knew Draco was adjusting the position of more than one weapon. “We know how he did it: he made her swallow his blood. Which means Rudie must have had a flaw after all, although of course we don’t know what it is.” He eyed Rudie for a moment, then turned away. “We need to explore this place and learn where he is.”  
  
“Do we stand a chance of rescuing her?” Warren had moved forwards and knelt down next to Rudie, running her fingers along her cheek. Harry had to look away. The expression on Warren’s face was complex and somber, her wand twitching in her grasp as though she wanted to cast a spell that could save her right now.  
  
“I don’t know,” Draco said, and his voice had grown firm enough that Harry blinked at him. “Be quiet and let me  _think_ for a bit.”  
  
There was really nothing to say to that, Harry thought. He leaned back against the wall and watched as Draco prowled in a circle, staring at the shadows that waited beyond the light of their  _Lumos_ Charms, the ones Harry had thought were too thick to be ordinary darkness.  
  
With Lionel, with Ron even, Harry would have prowled with him, wanting to know what was going on, wanting to plan, not trusting his partner to handle everything by himself. He wanted to be  _nearby,_ invested, implanted, interested, talked to.  
  
With Draco, he could trust more. The clinking in Draco’s cloak and the way he had figured out what was going on in Ernhardt’s potions lab in Cuthbert’s Corner increased Harry’s confidence. So he waited, and saw Jenkins and Warren arguing from the corner of his eye, seeming torn between imitating him and questioning Draco until he told them the truth.  
  
That wasn’t Harry’s problem. He fixed his eyes on Draco, and waited.  
  
*  
  
The contours of this room, or cellar, or cavern—Draco had no idea what someone else would have called it, or what Ernhardt did—had seemed familiar to Draco from the instant he stepped into them. Now he prowled around them, and watched with his eyes narrowed until the sense of familiarity turned into reality.  
  
He paused, his breath rushing through his lungs, making his nose ache with how fast it came out of his nostrils. Could it really be—was it…?  
  
Yes. Draco couldn’t be fooled, not by that bulging oval shape, or the slick grey stone, streaked with brown and black, that he could see when he lifted his wand high enough and directed its light into corners. The cavern had the shape of a ritual circle Draco had seen printed in one of his parents’ books.  
  
Well,  _circle,_ Draco thought, calm even though his heart was going mad. If you could call something a circle when it was extending off to the side like that. He didn’t think the name mattered. What mattered was what it was used for.  
  
And this was used for containing dangerous magical beings. It had sometimes been used to kidnap loyal house-elves from their masters, and keep them from Apparating away, not something that many other magical devices could do.  
  
Draco took a step back towards Harry. He wanted to test it. There was no point in keeping their magic to themselves at this point. Ernhardt had to know they were here, even if he couldn’t see out of Rudie’s eyes the way he could have out of the eyes of someone he was possessing.  
  
“Try to cast a curse at the walls,” he told Harry quietly.  
  
“Why?” Jenkins demanded, but Draco ignored her. The way Harry’s magic worked, or didn’t work, should provide her with the answer to that question soon enough.  
  
Harry didn’t question Draco, as Draco had known he wouldn’t. He stepped up beside him and aimed his wand at a niche in the stone, a place that corresponded to a bulge in the circle in the design Draco remembered. His spell was nonverbal, but the magic swished past Draco’s head hard enough to raise the hair on the back of his neck, and Draco knew enough about Harry’s power to realize that the stone should have exploded just there, a hole opening to whatever lay beyond the cavern.  
  
It didn’t. There was a short, angry buzz from the stone, and then it tightened and settled, the streaks of brown and black creeping across what had been empty rock a moment before. Draco heard something snap into place, something more mental than physical. He nodded and turned to face Jenkins and Warren.  
  
“This is a trap,” Warren said, tilting her head back as though she could see a cage descending from the ceiling. “We can’t use magic to hack our way out because—why can’t we?” She turned back to Draco.  
  
Draco had to admit it gave him a bit of a rush, to know that two Aurors who were so skilled in Dark magic were coming to him for answers. He tried not to let the smugness infect his voice as he answered. “Because this is a version of a ritual circle. An oddly shaped one, I’ll grant you, but a powerful one.”  
  
“To hold magical creatures,” Jenkins said, and if she noticed the glare Draco couldn’t keep under control, she ignored it. She didn’t sound alarmed, either. She turned in a slow circle of her own, studying the walls, and then nodded. “I wondered why there were no defenses so far, but he doesn’t need to keep us out when he can simply confine us in here.”  
  
“As always, dear lady, you are wonderfully correct.”  
  
Draco saw Jenkins’s wand come up before she remembered the circle and lowered it again. The voice was coming from beyond the niche Harry had cast at. Draco could see a crack there now, but he doubted Harry’s spell had opened it. Nor did he doubt that something protected it. Indeed, when he moved a slow, sliding step closer, to see exactly how near he could get before Ernhardt did something to keep him back, there was a flickering glaze lining the crack.  
  
“I grow tired of this chase.” Ernhardt swayed for a moment as though he would move his face, Macgeorge’s face, into sight, but pulled back at the last minute. Draco noted that with his heart hammering and all his senses alert and straining. There had to be a reason for that. Why not that he wasn’t as confident in the strength of his circle as he seemed to be? “You must be as well. And why can you not depart and leave me in peace? I hold no resentment even for the attempt to deprive me of my soul. I gave Rudie what she wanted, reunion with her partner.”  
  
“You turned her into a slave,” Harry said. Draco grimaced a little—trust Harry to leap straight to the most obvious conclusion, and one that might make Ernhardt angry—but he also had to admit that he couldn’t see much wrong with the tactic in this particular case. It kept Ernhardt distracted while Draco studied him.  
  
“Yes, I did,” Ernhardt said. “But she’s with her partner, and they both serve the same master now.” There was a little hiss on the last words, a sound of pain. Draco imagined a spirit held alive in Ernhardt’s brain, able to hear what was going on and insert herself into the conversation at any point she wanted. He hoped for it. “She has what she wanted. You have what you wanted, the assurance that I won’t ever trouble the Ministry again. I don’t have the strength for it. I don’t want it. Why not back off now and let me keep this last sanctuary?”  
  
“He thinks it was for the Ministry that we came here,” Jenkins said, and shook her head a little. “That just shows that he’s insane in the manner of the classic twisted.”  
  
Ernhardt said nothing for a long second. He would have attacked before, Draco knew. Just as he wouldn’t have said some of the things he’d just said before, or at least he would have spoken in a different way.  
  
Something had  _changed._  
  
And thinking through what had occurred in the battle in the clearing, Draco was most inclined to attribute it to his soul-wrenching spell—the one tactic they’d used there that Ernhardt hadn’t encountered before.  
  
 _What would happen if one soul was almost taken out of a body shared by two?_  
  
Draco edged to the side. He thought he might be out of Ernhardt’s line of sight, since it came through that narrow crack in the stone. He caught Harry’s eye, and Harry nodded without seeming to, a ripple of motion that passed through his jaw muscles and up and around his ears without much troubling his face. Then Harry said aloud, “Why did you want slaves in the first place? Aren’t the people you can possess enough for you?”  
  
Draco drew his wand, but kept it down by his side. His fingers trembled on it. He stilled them. If Ernhardt could change, he thought he could, as well. He was very calm, very cool at the moment, forcing himself not to worry about Harry or the prospect that he would get hurt. He edged around to the side, and closed his eyes, forcing his memory forwards.  
  
Harry was bantering with Ernhardt, and Jenkins had joined in, sharp cracks of sound that Draco at least knew weren’t directed at him. If she suspected what he was doing, good. If not, she knew she was part of a distraction, and that was good enough.  
  
Draco mouthed the words of the incantation to himself, not daring to speak aloud. He would only get one chance at this, and that was assuming he was right in the first place about what had happened to Ernhardt. The words ran through his head and seemed to dance on his tongue. He breathed in and out, and then he was ready, as ready as he would ever be, a great cool power rising in his head and hands.  
  
He began to incant the spell that would pull Ernhardt’s soul free of his stolen body again, but this time, he specified it as the soul of a man with an extra Latin word. The book he’d read the spell in had said the magic might be modified that way, as long as care was taken not to disrupt the functioning of the spell unduly. Draco didn’t know exactly what that meant. He only knew that he had sometimes modified spells like this in the past, and that he had escaped whole with his skin and his own soul.  
  
He had to do this. It was the only chance, or the best chance, they would get to defeat Ernhardt. He whispered the spell over and over, rising towards a pitch of power.  
  
And at the moment when he most needed distraction, Harry provided it for him.  
  
*  
  
Harry didn’t know exactly what Draco had planned, but he reckoned he didn’t have to. His role was plain enough. He was to distract Ernhardt.   
  
His words had been enough to do that up until now, as Ernhardt wearily tried to justify himself, an immortal power bound to answer the questions of stupid mortals. But his answers had got shorter, and Harry could see a flicker or two of movement through the crack, as though he was trying to position himself to see the whole room.  
  
Draco couldn’t risk that. Which meant Harry couldn’t, either.  
  
His glance crossed Jenkins’s like a sword, and he nodded, no longer caring if Ernhardt saw the movement. He knew something was happening, anyway. Jenkins nodded back, and moved up to stand at Harry’s shoulder, her hand briefly squeezing his arm. Harry spied Warren pacing towards one of the walls. She was setting up another distraction, maybe, or looking for a way out of the ritual circle.  
  
 _Will whatever Draco’s doing be powerful enough to break through the circle?_  
  
Maybe it wasn’t a spell aimed at breaking the circle, so it could pass the boundaries. Harry hoped so.  
  
Ernhardt said, “I grow tired of this. I think I will begin to crush—”  
  
Jenkins cast an instant before Harry did, a rushing white light that filled the room in front of the crack but narrowed to an intense point behind. Harry half-closed his eyes to avoid looking at that point, hearing Ernhardt snarl as he went blind. He cast himself, the only spell he could think of that might distract Ernhardt sufficiently.  
  
The spell rose and then shook itself apart near the roof, a firework that roared and filled the cavern with fiery bursts of light. It wouldn’t blind Ernhardt any more than Jenkins’s spell already had, but it was sure as hell distracting.  
  
And the noise should cover any sound Draco might make in his chanting.  
  
Ernhardt roared again, and Harry heard him break off something that might have been a spell. The crack in the stone widened, and Ernhardt lurched into the middle of the circle, turning his head rapidly back and forth.  
  
Draco’s spell took effect at the same time, and Ernhardt screamed and cowered towards the floor.  
  
Harry edged closer. It was hard, watching Macgeorge’s body flinch like that. It was  _her_ hands that Ernhardt raised to cover his face, her voice he screamed with.  
  
But that only made it all the more obscene, and Harry all the more determined to destroy him forever. He raised his wand and cast another spell that filled the room with light and fire. It might distract Ernhardt as he tried to get back to his feet or back to consciousness, and it couldn’t do anything bad to Draco now that he had cast his spell.  
  
Draco turned towards him in the glare of the falling sparks, his face shining so much that Harry blushed and ducked his head. Then the moment was past, and Draco was running towards Ernhardt, casting something else. Ernhardt, who had been clawing at his hair as if he would tug it out, suddenly jerked and straightened, his hands pulled out to the side.  
  
Harry wondered why for a moment, then remembered that Macgeorge might want her hair if she ever got her own body back. He nodded.  
  
Warren and Jenkins were coming in from the opposite side, and once again they had silently communicated with each other—or maybe Harry had just missed it in all the excitement—and made a plan. Warren stopped short of Ernhardt and chanted, another spell that Harry didn’t know, and Jenkins whirled in a circle around him, wand downwards. As Harry watched, an invisible blade began to carve a ring in the stone, surrounding Ernhardt with it, locking him into place with a shiver and a bang.  
  
Warren’s spell took effect at the same moment as the circle closed, answering Harry’s question about how  _her_ magic would reach him if the circle kept spells confined. Ernhardt screamed and banged his head back and forth, and then an invisible clamp held his neck still, echoing the spell holding his wrists.  
  
Then they waited, in silence. Jenkins walked back to check on Rudie, but none of the rest of them could take their eyes off Ernhardt, the writhing, screaming figure in the center of the circle. Harry discovered he was clenching his jaw so hard that his teeth felt as if they would crack. He loosened the tension carefully and moved towards Draco.  
  
“What did you use?” he whispered.  
  
“The same spell that pulled the soul from his body,” Draco murmured. “But modified so it would attack a specifically  _masculine_ soul this time.” He looked at Harry, and smiled. Harry reckoned his face must have been a study. “Didn’t you notice how differently he was acting? That made me wonder if the first time I did this spell had had more effect on him than I realized. Maybe Macgeorge’s soul was starting to fight its way out from under his dominance when his soul slammed back into his body.” A slight tremble of Draco’s jaw was the only sign that he was thinking of Elder; then he passed smoothly on. “I didn’t know it would work until it—well, until it began to work. But I think I might have been right.”  
  
Jenkins came back to them then, leading Rudie on her arm. Her eyes were still streaked with red around the edges, but Harry thought he could read that as a more ordinary bloodshot look, not the one caused by Ernhardt enslaving her with his blood.  
  
And when she stared at the figure in the middle of the circle, and checked a sudden exclamation, it was clear she had recovered enough to recognize her partner and want her back. Harry made a place for her at the edge of their ring, though he noticed Jenkins watched her, not Ernhardt, and had her hand on her wand.  
  
So they waited, through the screaming and the thrashing, to see if it would be life or death.


	17. Conquering

It seemed like an hour, and might have been, before Macgeorge's eyes closed and then opened without a trace of blue. For a moment, her hands still rose and clawed at the air, but they settled back at her side so quickly that Harry might have missed that if he'd blinked.  
  
She turned around, kneeling, inside the circle, and stared at them. She bowed her head when her eyes fell on Rudie. Harry relaxed a little. Macgeorge might have come back dangerously twisted and inclined to use more violence than before, but not everything good in her could be dead if she recognized her partner.  
  
"Isla?" Macgeorge licked her lips and touched her throat as though she didn't know where the hoarseness came from. "I don't understand--the last thing I knew, you were telling me that you would kill me if I used necromancy again."  
  
 _How much of her memory is really gone?_ Harry suspected they might never know. Hell, they didn't know if Ernhardt was truly exiled from her soul yet, or if a piece of him might linger, clever enough to disguise its presence for the time being.  
  
"I would have killed you," Rudie said, opening her eyes and staring at Macgeorge. "Maybe I should have. It would have spared you from what came after this." But her lips were trembling, and she turned her face away and shut her eyes again, in a way that made Harry feel he shouldn't be looking. He cleared his throat.  
  
That snapped Macgeorge's attention to him. "What are you doing here?" she demanded, before she looked at the rest of Socrates Corps and frowned. "What are you--what are the  _rest_ of you doing here?"  
  
"You were possessed by Ernhardt." Jenkins was the one who spoke, cool and precise, her wand down at her side but in the kind of position where Harry knew it could come up quickly if Macgeorge made a wrong move. Harry was more than willing to let her handle this. He suspected she would know what information to give, which could be dangerous and which wasn't, if Ernhardt still lurked somewhere in the back of Macgeorge's mind. "He used you and your necromancy to fight us. If he had had the time to face us head-on, he might have been more dangerous. As it was, we seem to have defeated him."  
  
"Seem," Macgeorge whispered. She looked around the inside of the cavern. "This is some place he brought me?"  
  
"Yes," Rudie said, and surged forwards an anxious step, only stopping at the boundary of the ritual circle. "He's had some sanctuaries that we destroyed, and this was his last one. Do you think you subdued him?"  
  
Macgeorge touched her throat and her forehead as though feeling for soreness or a fever would tell her. Harry caught the way Draco's eyes were narrowed from the corner of his eye, and half-nodded. He would distrust the way Macgeorge acted, too. Being under the control of someone as volatile as Ernhardt for weeks had to change a person.  
  
And they had never known of someone who was fully controlled and then recovered like this, either. They had fought him off themselves, and he had possessed a few people, like Ginny, temporarily, leaving of his own free will. The other victims had all been his to do what he liked with.  
  
"I think I did," Macgeorge whispered. "But there is a test I can perform that should make me sure. Will you let me perform it?"  
  
Harry blinked, wondering why she was asking their permission when the old Macgeorge wouldn't have, and then recalled that she was still inside Jenkins's circle. That prevented her from working any magic.  
  
"Here," Rudie whispered, holding out a slender shaft of beech wood. "Here's your wand."   
  
"A second," Draco said, more coldly than Harry had ever heard from him. "I'm sure this is lovely, but I don't think I want to let her out of the circle yet. We don't have any  _proof_ that she's subdued Ernhardt."  
  
"You don't have any proof that she hasn't, either." Rudie turned around and glared at him. "Are you going to keep her prisoner forever on the  _off_ chance that she might be dangerous to us?"  
  
"It's hardly forever right now," Draco said, and took a step forwards. Harry moved at his side. As sympathetic as he was to Rudie, he didn't think it was a good idea to let Macgeorge out without some kind of further test, either. "I'm sure Nicolette understands. Don't you?" He nodded familiarly to Macgeorge, who gave him a hard, complicated smile in return.  
  
"Of course," she said, and sat waiting for them. Harry glanced at Draco. He didn't have any idea of what kind of test someone could implement to "prove" that a powerfully possessing person was gone, and he didn't think Draco did, either.  
  
But Draco knelt down outside the ritual circle and said, "I'm a good Legilimens, when someone lets me in. Will you?"  
  
Macgeorge started and looked as if she would like to crawl into the crack in the cave wall where she--where Ernhardt--had hidden and watched them. Then she shook her head. "No one else has the right to read my thoughts."  
  
"They do when you might become a danger to them because you  _didn't_ let someone else read your thoughts," Draco said, and shrugged peacefully, and moved back with a glance around the circle of Socrates Aurors. "Does anyone else have an idea how we could find out? Because that was my only one."  
  
Rudie stepped forwards. "She's been tormented more than any of us can imagine in the last month," she insisted in a low voice. "Why should we torture her further by implying that we don't trust her?"  
  
"That's not torment," Jenkins said. "That's the truth."  
  
Harry winced a little, and hoped he had concealed it when Rudie turned wide eyes to him. He agreed with Jenkins and Draco, but it seemed cruel to say it aloud.   
  
"But you have to understand that we can't be sure of anything until we let her out of the circle," Rudie went on, in the kind of calm, sane voice Harry remembered using himself after Lionel had died and he was trying to make other people understand what to do about the body and how important it was not to bury it so that Lionel wouldn't be stuck under the earth when he woke up. "And then it would be too late if she did mean us some harm. So we have to take it on faith, and trust."  
  
"If she let me in, then I could see for myself," Draco said.  
  
"Why  _should_ she?" Rudie snapped. "What have you ever done but pull her into your cases, and distrust her?"  
  
"Part of that was my fault, Isla," Macgeorge interrupted. She had been sitting back with her arms folded, watching them argue as if she was watching parts in a play, but she leaned forwards now with an intent little frown on her face that Harry had never seen before. "I knew exactly what might happen to me if I used too much necromancy, since I'd studied it. I wanted to help in their case anyway."  
  
"But they didn't say thank you," Rudie said, turning on her with a savagery that made Harry's hands silently clench. "They could at least have given you more trust now, since it's the only gratitude you'll get."  
  
"I understand their attitude," Macgeorge said, and smiled, although Harry thought it had to be hard with her teeth grinding against each other like that. "Not that I like it, but I understand it. And I'll wait until they come up with some test that satisfies them."  
  
"We have," Draco said, examining his nails. "And you rejected it."  
  
"Would you let someone else look into your mind without Legilimency, if there was a way to achieve it?" Warren asked in a quiet voice before Macgeorge could respond. Harry had almost forgotten she was there. She moved forwards a step or so now, and her eyes were fixed intently on Macgeorge's face.  
  
"There is no way to get inside someone's mind without Legilimency," Macgeorge said, staring at her. "Unless you want to possess me the way  _he_ did, which--" She paused as if reconsidering what she was about to say, then shrugged and said it. "I'd kill myself first, before I let that happen again."  
  
Rudie cried out, but neither Macgeorge nor Warren paid attention to her. Harry wondered what to call the way they looked at each other. It wasn't angry, exactly. They just watched each other like professional duelists.  
  
Finally, Warren said, "Are you at least willing to let me describe the way that I can get into someone's mind without Legilimency?"  
  
Macgeorge didn't nod so much as bow her chin down to her knees. She sat there with her head and arms supported on them, shaking a little. Harry wondered if she was shaking because she was angry, or upset, or trying to reclaim her limbs and the feeling of living in her body after Ernhardt was gone from it.  
  
 _If he is really gone._  
  
"Fine," Warren said. "This is a spell that does reach into your mind, but it pulls the thoughts and dreams and desires outside of it and makes them into pictures that other people can see, instead of letting the caster read your mind directly. It was more common before they invented Veritaserum. And, of course, it's still used with people who can't talk and children so young that asking them questions under Veritaserum wouldn't produce sensible answers. The images will need some interpretation, but you'll be fully conscious."  
  
Macgeorge narrowed her eyes. "The images will be the response to your questions?" When Warren nodded, she said, "Mind the questions you ask."  
  
Warren only nodded again, and then stood there as though waiting for something. Jenkins flicked an eloquent glance at her, and removed the ritual circle.  
  
Warren acted blurringly fast, before Rudie could toss Macgeorge her wand or Macgeorge could use necromancy. Harry didn't hear the incantation, but then again, it might have been nonverbal. Macgeorge's eyes gleamed green for a second, light spreading inwards from around the socket, and her head rocked back.  
  
When she brought it down again, she glared at Warren and slowly rose to her feet. "You didn't say it would  _hurt_ so much," she muttered.  
  
"You didn't ask that," Warren said, and then, "Do you think you have any trace of Ernhardt still in your head?"  
  
Macgeorge let loose with a long, low, hissing sound, like a kettle. Harry wondered what she intended to say, or if she simply resented being asked the question, necessary though it was. Then he realized the hiss was coming from her eyes, and the mist pouring away from them to form into images in the middle of the room, between them.  
  
Harry winced a little. There might be reasons other than the dominance of Veritaserum why people had stopped using this spell.  
  
Draco's hand took his elbow and held on hard. Harry nodded without looking away from the images. He didn't want Draco to lose time thinking he had to reassure Harry.  
  
The image that formed was a familiar one, of the bone-bats that had attacked them when they first arrived in this sanctuary. The bats jerked and fell apart in mid-flight as Harry watched them, and then a shadow he hadn't been aware underlay the picture withdrew. They were looking at an ordinary cave. Harry knew he would have a hard time telling anyone what he found unfamiliar and disquieting about it.  
  
The second image that followed it was the skull-house Ernhardt had fled to in the Forbidden Forest. The house changed as Harry watched, though, the size of the eyesockets altering and new pink things protruding from the sides and the mouth, as though Macgeorge found the picture aesthetically offensive and planned to change the shape.  
  
And a third image, of the bones in the clearing in the Forbidden Forest rising and plunging down towards them like arrows. Harry saw himself perform the spell that turned them aside. He saw Warren take a small step forwards as if it mattered that this image was exactly like the reality instead of changed, but he had no idea what was important in that, or if anything was. He didn't know how to read this spell.  
  
Macgeorge continued to sit with her hands tightly closed. Her eyes were open, but Harry half-thought that was only because they had to be for the spell to work. She certainly didn't seem as though she was paying attention to the dancing pictures in front of her.  
  
Finally, an image appeared that Harry didn't recognize. It looked like his old cupboard, but it was made of stone instead of wood. Macgeorge leaned against the door, pounding on it and screaming at whoever stood on the other side.  
  
Harry relaxed a little as the door in the image swung open. Maybe that was a sign that Macgeorge was no longer imprisoned in her own mind and could take control of it back. Maybe it meant that she had finally broken free because Ernhardt was gone.  
  
"I cannot tell," Warren said, after a long and weighted silence. She nodded to Jenkins, who moved to close the circle around Macgeorge again before anything else could happen.  
  
"How can I reassure you, then?" Macgeorge's voice was cold and sullen, the ashes of a long-dead fire. She crouched in the middle of the circle and bowed her head, seeming oblivious to Rudie's sound of distress. "You take away the best chance that I have, you insist that I'm not telling the truth and this isn't real, and then you shut me up again like a criminal."  
  
"The best chance you have is to let Malfoy use Legilimency on you," Warren said.  
  
"I've had my mind invaded once." Macgeorge's eyes couldn't have looked fiercer were they blue. "It won't happen again."  
  
"And you really think that the Ministry will accept you back at your job without some kind of interrogation?" Harry asked, because that seemed to him an obvious fact that no one else was thinking about. "The last they knew, you were the home of the twisted who not only tricked them for years by posing as the Head Auror but embarrassed them with the very public manner in which you left. And you know the Ministry forgives anything more readily than embarrassment. They'll want to read your mind or give you Veritaserum or  _something_ before they let you have your job back."  
  
"That's ridiculous," Macgeorge said, staring at Harry with the same sullenness she had shown Warren. Harry decided it didn't matter who had cast which spell on her at the moment, she would still show the same demeanor, which he had a hard time blaming her for. "I'm the innocent victim here."  
  
"I happen to agree with that, but the chances are good that  _they_ won't," Harry pointed out.  
  
Macgeorge's face folded into hard lines. "Maybe I would rather have strangers interrogate me than you lot."  
  
"Why?" Draco asked. He spoke in a completely calm and detached voice, and, Harry saw when he looked sideways at him, leaned against the wall with his arms folded, studying Macgeorge as if she was some new and fascinating specimen of stupidity. "You know what the Ministry hierarchy is like. You know how stubborn and set in their ways they are. You  _know_ what can happen to someone who displeases them. And you still would rather allow them in your head than me, an ally?"  
  
"You weren't much of an ally to me in your last case."  
  
"You  _weren't_ ," Rudie said, and faced Draco with a quivering face that made Harry want to tell her to lie down somewhere, instead of taking a part in her partner's conflict with the rest of them. But that was useless, given the way she had stepped into this case from the beginning. She wouldn't retreat during the last moments. "You would have watched out for her safety and stopped her from using necromancy if you really cared about her."  
  
"What happened to the part where she was an adult and made the choice to exploit her flaw?" Draco still didn't move. Harry wondered if he was the only one who realized the message of the tightening muscles in Draco's legs and his clenched shoulders. Draco could push off in any direction, charge the circle or curse Rudie or escape to the side before Warren and Jenkins could restrain him. "A few minutes ago she was insisting on her complete freedom and independence from Harry and me, and now she's refusing to let anyone look into her mind."  
  
"It's her  _mind_ ," said Rudie. "Would you want someone to look into it if you'd spent the last few weeks under the possession of someone else?"  
  
"I wouldn't," Harry said, because he was tired of the way this was going around and around, and Macgeorge had seemed to listen to him, enough to respond, the last time he spoke. "But I would do if it was the only way to get my job back and get my co-workers to trust me again." He stared pointedly at Macgeorge.  
  
"Some of those co-workers won't let you out of the circle again until you make the decision to have your mind examined," Jenkins added pleasantly. "You could choose to sit there until the stone crumbles around you, of course. But I can go elsewhere and entertain myself. _You_ have to stay inside the circle."  
  
Macgeorge and Rudie moved at the same moment. Macgeorge stood up and charged the line of the circle. Rudie spun towards Jenkins with both her own wand and the one she had held out to Macgeorge leveled.  
  
Jenkins concentrated all her attention on Rudie, taking her wrists in one hand and slamming them together so that Rudie cried out and lost her grip on the wands. In another second, Jenkins had swung her further so that Rudie's arms were bound up behind her back and she struggled madly but without effect to kick Jenkins in the shin. Warren, meanwhile, gathered Rudie's wands without a blink.  
  
Macgeorge had hit the side of the circle, had her foot bounced back by a shimmering curtain of light, and reeled into the center of the ring again. Now she sat rubbing her foot and wincing when she met Warren's gaze.  
  
"My partner's magic is stronger than yours," Warren said simply. "Especially if you are free of Ernhardt now and don't have his personality to back yours up. It's much simpler to submit to the sure test."  
  
"You don't even know if Malfoy is a good enough Legilimens to clear me," Macgeorge said, bowing her head so that her long, dirty brown hair trailed the floor.  
  
"I'm going to trust him to tell us if he feels like he isn't," Warren said, and cocked an eyebrow at Draco. Meanwhile, Jenkins cast a Stunner on Rudie. She shrugged when Harry looked at her.  
  
"She needed the sleep anyway," Jenkins mouthed.  
  
Harry nodded. Either Rudie needed the sleep or she was better off out of the way, and he honestly wasn't sure which. He faced the circle again as Draco said, "I will let you know if I don't feel I can be sure."  
  
"That's all I ask," Warren said. "Do you agree, Nicolette?"  
  
The use of Macgeorge's first name was a calculated blow, and Harry could see from the way her shoulders quivered that it had struck her. She leaned back on her hands and heels and stared at Warren with a kind of helpless fury.  
  
"I don't have a choice, do I?" she snapped.  
  
"No." Warren's voice was gentle for all it was so implacable. Harry was glad that she was the one handling things right now instead of him or Draco. He would have been too sympathetic and made Macgeorge feel she  _did_ have a choice. Draco would have been too snappish.  
  
"Then, fine," Macgeorge said, and Draco stepped forwards and through the circle as Jenkins cast to relax it for him, renewing it behind him. Draco immediately cast a Body-Bind on Macgeorge. Harry relaxed and let go of his wand.  
  
Then Draco leaned forwards and said softly,  _"Legilimens_ ," and they all entered into the eternal process of waiting again.  
  
*  
  
Draco held his breath. He was walking through something so thick and hot and fetid that it felt as if the stink was a separate entity that had invaded his nose, and he opened his eyes unsurprised to see that it was a swamp.  _Why_ the center of Macgeorge's mind should be a swamp was her business, he felt, and he didn't intend to question it. But he did grimace as he stepped forwards and the dark water slapped his legs.  
  
He walked, or waded, further in. There was no path here, nothing he could see except moss-draped trees and small hillocks and humps so thick with shadow that it was hard to tell whether they were more sunken trees, or stones, or simply islands. He didn't know what he was looking for.  
  
But Legilimency usually guided its practitioners to the right place by instinct, the same way that a person's mind assumed the right shape for them on instinct. Draco would recognize what he was looking for when he saw it.  
  
As he walked, he breathed, for all that he didn't want to, and nodded a little. The foulness around him was familiar, the same foulness that had tainted it whenever he encountered Macgeorge's necromancy. But he didn't sense the same intense darkness that he had when it came to Ernhardt.  
  
And he had had Ernhardt in his head, as well as watched him possess other people, even Harry. He would  _know_.  
  
At last he saw a raised island ahead, and something small and bright red in the midst of all that black and grey-green shadowiness. Draco crouched down to look at it. It was a lacquered box, with an illustration of a long-tailed black bird on the cover, an almost skeletal one.  
  
Gently, Draco reached out and opened the box. The lid swung back to his touch as eagerly as though something inside it were pushing it open.  
  
Inside lay a small, barely-fledged, extremely pissed-off bird. It rose to his eye level as Draco watched, a hummingbird with black feathers and bony feet. When it opened its beak, it shrilled at him in a tone that made him wince, and then darted away into the swamp.  
  
And the stink receded somewhat, and while the air didn't turn clear or the water clean, Draco could breathe now. He stood back up, nodding. There was no trace of Ernhardt. He had freed the last imprisoned bit of Macgeorge, the humor that had made her joke with them sometimes and rendered her more than the implacable human hunting machine she had been during the Bainbridge case.  
  
He thought they could all relax now.  
  
He moved back and half-bowed his head, opening his hands to release the hummingbird to its dominion over Macgeorge's mind while he retreated. He opened his eyes and smiled at the look on her face before he glanced up and nodded.  
  
He released Macgeorge from her Body-Bind at the same moment as Jenkins released the ritual circle. Macgeorge rose stiffly to her feet, glared some more, and shuffled over to pick up her wand from where it had fallen when Jenkins Stunned Rudie.  
  
And there was no attack.  
  
Draco relaxed, and turned back to face the admiring smile on Harry's face and the sensation of a job well done, of Ernhardt conquered at last.


	18. True Allegiances

"And you think we're going to march into the Ministry, and that'll be it?"  
  
Draco ground his teeth. He understood Macgeorge's impulse to pick and nag and argue. She had been a captive of a man who could make reality appear to be whatever he wanted, and her body had been used to commit crimes. She would be more distrustful of the Ministry and its hierarchy than the other Aurors were, at least once she regained her senses fully and started to think about the long-term consequences of her actions.  
  
"No," said Rudie. Draco had to admire the way she had come back to herself after she was assured Macgeorge was safe. She couldn't stop smiling and looking at her partner, or reaching out to touch her shoulder and elbow as though to feel solid flesh, but she had interceded between Macgeorge and the rest of them, especially between Macgeorge and Jenkins, without ever dropping her gentleness. "But we have to explain the truth to them, or they'll never believe that you've returned to yourself."  
  
"I'm not sure that  _I_ believe in it, sometimes," Macgeorge said, and ran one hand down her face.  
  
"A quick way to get yourself put back into prison is to say that where someone can hear," Draco snapped. He ignored Rudie's look. He had put up with this nonsense longer than anyone should have to. "We're going to have enough trouble convincing them that Ernhardt is really gone. They think he's invincible, now, and they hate that he made a fool of them by pretending to be Head Auror. They'll do anything they can to seize on someone else to blame. Don't give them that person."  
  
Macgeorge thought about it, and then grunted a little. "There's some sense in what you say," she admitted. "You really think they'll believe me, though? I don't have any  _proof_ that it was Ernhardt and not me who committed those crimes."  
  
"There's always Veritaserum," Draco reminded her cheerfully. "Or Legilimency, assuming you want to submit your mind to someone other than me. Or I can put the memory of your mind being cleansed in a Pensieve."  
  
Macgeorge looked at him evenly, then nodded. "I might ask you to do that," she said, and leaned around the corner of the little alley behind the Ministry entrance in which they stood, looking for Jenkins and Warren, who had gone ahead into the Ministry. "Where  _are_ they? It can't take that long to make sure whether anyone is in the Socrates office."  
  
"But longer to make sure of a clear path to get you there."  
  
Draco started and turned.  _He_ hadn't sensed Jenkins sneaking up behind them, and he really should have. She only raised an eyebrow at him and gave him a thin smile, and then turned to Macgeorge. Macgeorge promptly ducked her head and played with her wand. Draco had noticed that she seemed more disposed to yield to Jenkins, even as she snarled and snapped at her suggestions.  
  
"I've found someone I think might listen to you," Jenkins told her quietly. "You were with Lucretius Corps at one point, weren't you?"  
  
Macgeorge grimaced. "Yes, but none of them put in a word against my being transferred to Socrates. I don't think they would care now."  
  
"You're wrong about that," Jenkins said calmly. "Some of them cared a lot when you were taken captive by a twisted, even though they might have thought that you would work better in a different Corps."  
  
Harry choked. Draco clapped a little. "Congratulations on mastering the Ministry jargon," he said. "Now, who is it?"  
  
Jenkins gave him the same mild look that she had met Macgeorge with. "Her name is Ellen Terry."  
  
Draco blinked. Terry was a better choice than he would have thought Jenkins would make, a tough and practical Auror who had a reputation for common sense and for not being above using Dark magic when she had to. Of course, she had also survived in the Ministry by not taking political risks. Draco would approve of her as a champion; he just didn't think that she would ever consent to serve as one.  
  
"And what's going to make her act?" Harry asked, in a slow drawl that Draco had to smile at. He turned to find Harry standing with his arms folded across his chest and his head shaking slightly, in the stance that Draco would have adopted already if he had thought it would do any good. "I know Terry, and while she's a good Auror, she really only cares about herself. I don't know what you have on her to make her take your side."  
  
"I did her a favor once," Jenkins said, and smiled in a way that made her look younger than Draco had ever seen her. "She hates the fact that she's never managed to repay me before now, because I didn't need anything from her. She'll leap at the chance to be rid of the obligation."  
  
Harry exchanged a glance with Draco. Draco nodded a little, but let Harry be the one to speak the doubt, since they both had the same one. "That doesn't sound like it will--work, sorry. She might consider our case, but she won't stand up for Macgeorge unless she really thinks she's innocent."  
  
"The consideration is the only thing I wanted to buy with the favor, anyway," Jenkins said, shrugging. "No, I can't make her do anything else. But without the favor, we wouldn't have this much chance."  
  
Draco sighed. He had to admit that he couldn't think of anyone more likely to believe them, and Terry at least had the advantage that she probably wouldn't run away to anyone else and confess what they'd told her, even if she decided that she didn't believe them. "Fine. Then how are we going to get into the Ministry?"  
  
"Along the clear corridors." Jenkins turned her head, and then nodded as a small silvery shape bounded up beside her. A wolf, Draco recognized after a startled, blinking moment. That was Warren's Patronus, as he remembered from the cellar of Cuthbert's Corner when he thought about it. "And here's our guide. Thomasina's managed to get us as much of a chance as we're likely to have. Ready?"   
  
She looked at Macgeorge more than the rest of them, not seeming to notice the way Rudie immediately nodded. She waited until Macgeorge hesitated, then said, "I'm as ready as I can be after what happened to me."  
  
Jenkins didn't seem to think that worth commenting on. She immediately turned and followed the wolf towards the end of the alley. Draco leaned for a moment on Harry, and Rudie seemed to lean on Macgeorge, before they followed.  
  
*  
  
The wolf flattened itself into shadows several times, and once paused with its tail bristling and led them in the opposite direction from the most used route to the lifts. Harry could feel his magic stirring restlessly inside him when that happened. His own stag wanted to come out and join the wolf. It objected to another Patronus doing all the work.  
  
But he calmed it with nothing more than a light touch to the back of his own neck. They were following Warren for right now, and Harry's stag had no idea where their enemies were coming from. Things would just have to wait.  
  
At last they were in the Socrates office, and Warren had opened the door and motioned them inside. Harry went in first, shielding Draco. The hair rising on the back of his neck, or maybe just the expression on Warren's face, had already warned him that she wasn't alone here.  
  
Ellen Terry stood bolt upright in the middle of the office, away from their desks, her arms folded as she waited for them.  
  
Harry nodded respectfully to her. She had short, curly blond hair and wide blue eyes, and a pale smooth face that made her look like a doll. But she wasn't a doll, and Harry didn't intend to underestimate her.  
  
"I know what I'm here to listen to," Terry said quietly. Her voice rang with far more commanding presence than anyone so small should have been able to muster, and had been Harry's first warning when he met her that she would be dangerous to underestimate. "What I don't know is what you think will convince me."  
  
Jenkins and Warren fell back so they were standing on either side of Macgeorge like an honor guard. Draco looked for a moment as though he was going to step forwards and do the same thing, but Harry tugged on his arm and shook his head when Draco looked at him. There was such a thing as overkill, and he didn't want Draco to look as though he was imitating anyone.  
  
Draco seemed to grasp his thoughts and agree after a second. He nodded grudgingly and moved back so that he was flanking Harry instead. Harry looked up, caught Terry's eye, and flushed a little as she nodded to him before turning back to Macgeorge.  
  
"Nicolette is the only one who can tell you her story," Jenkins said. Her left arm moved briefly, and Harry realized that it had come down to fasten like an iron bar in front of Rudie's chest. "If you don't believe her, there's nothing we can say to convince you."  
  
Terry focused on Macgeorge then. "Do you need to take a bath and have something to eat before you tell me?" she asked quietly, eyes on Macgeorge's tangled hair.  
  
Macgeorge gave her a hard smile. "No, madam. Thank you. I've gone this long without a bath, and I've already had something to eat."   
  
 _Even if that was only some biscuits that Rudie was carrying,_ Harry added silently to himself.  
  
Macgeorge stood straight and clasped her hands behind her back, the pose that Harry thought she'd probably used to give reports to the Head Auror. "I thought I could hunt the last twisted that Aurors Potter and Malfoy went after because I used my gift of necromancy..."  
  
Draco winced a little, and Harry dug an elbow into his ribs. The Ministry had questioned everyone around the time of Macgeorge's disappearance, including Rudie, and she hadn't hidden any details she thought the Ministry could use to help her get Macgeorge back, when she still had faith in them to do it. That meant everyone who mattered among the Aurors would already know about Macgeorge's necromancy.  
  
Terry didn't seem disposed to flee the room at the mere mention of very Dark magic, anyway. Her eyes deepened in color, but she stood listening as Macgeorge explained the end of the Bainbridge case and how she had been near enough, after Harry and Draco almost cornered Ernhardt within his own body, for him to leap to hers.  
  
"What was that experience like?" Terry asked, her eyes deep again but her voice so soft that Harry couldn't really understand her expression, whatever it was.   
  
"Like being imprisoned in slime that lets you keep breathing," Macgeorge said. "Like bathing in rotted flesh."  
  
Terry winced this time. "I believe I understand," she said, voice barely a breath. "Do what you need to do to explain further, but--I understand the basic terms."  
  
Macgeorge nodded and continued reciting. She remembered little of what had happened until they awakened her in the cavern under Ernhardt's last sanctuary, she explained, but she could describe the  _sensations_ , the draining of her magic and the way that Ernhardt had blazed and decayed in the middle of her emotions. Part of her had known that she was attacking her own partner and her old allies even though she hadn't been able to see it.  
  
"Like knowledge without memory," she told Terry, her jaw set. "Like--being asleep in another room and dreaming about what was going on in the rest of the house."  
  
"Understood," said Terry, her eyes burning. "And they brought you back to yourself?" For the first time since Macgeorge had started speaking, she looked at the rest of them.  
  
“Yes,” Macgeorge said. “They used Dark magic to do it.” They had agreed they would have to admit that, but no more details. Terry was the kind of Auror who might reject a soul-draining spell. “They broke Ernhardt’s hold, and once that happened, I could fight my way back to control of myself. They didn’t know if the victory was complete, so they read my mind.”  
  
“Who did?” Terry stirred a little, but not to clasp her hand on her wand, as Harry had feared. She just looked from face to face as though wondering which of them had such a dangerous power. Harry wondered if he should be insulted or not that her eyes passed over him without once stopping.   
  
“Auror Malfoy,” Macgeorge said.  
  
Terry faced Draco. Once again, Harry dug an elbow into his ribs, just as a precaution. Draco nodded to him, and perhaps to Terry, and stood waiting for the questions.  
  
“You know that Legilimency can be a terrible power, and should only be used under carefully chosen circumstances?” Terry asked him.  
  
“I know that,” Draco said, and sounded, if not humble, at least not scornful, which was an improvement on what Harry had  _thought_ would happen. “I would never have used it if I could think of any other way to make sure that Auror Macgeorge had really returned to herself, but Ernhardt had fooled us before.”  
  
Terry studied him, then sniffed a little. Harry chose to assume that they had passed for now. She looked back at Macgeorge. “Why do you think the Ministry will despise you for being the victim of a madman?”  
  
Macgeorge straightened her back. “It’s widely-known that I practiced necromancy in the months before I became a victim. And I’ve used Dark magic, or at least my body has used Dark magic, and I don’t know how many people really believed in what Ernhardt was doing, or that he existed. They might blame me for his crimes, or decide that my necromancy is too Dark to let me come back.”  
  
Terry’s eyes shifted a little, but she only said, “You would have to cease to practice necromancy if you became an Auror.”  
  
Macgeorge set her jaw, and then nodded. “I do see that,” she said, when Terry watched her with raised eyebrows. “I know that I can’t—do exactly as I would like all the time.” She winced as Terry frowned. “And it will be hard, I’m not denying that. Necromancy is the Darkest of Dark magic, and all Dark magic is addictive.”  
  
“Did you know that?” Draco whispered to Harry. “I didn’t know that.”  
  
Harry nudged him again. Draco ought to have known Macgeorge was only saying that as a way to gain Terry’s support. No matter how much he disagreed with it, he could keep silent for right now.  
  
Terry gave Draco one sharp look, and then seemed to dismiss him entirely as she turned back to Macgeorge. “You know that there are people who won’t believe you no matter what you say,” she murmured. “Can you stand against them?”  
  
“With friends behind me. As long as I have at least the  _chance_ at a fair hearing.”  
  
Terry considered her again, then nodded. “What you say is enough to convince me that you suffered, and didn’t rejoice in the Dark magic that Ernhardt made you perform, the way that someone truly lost to the Dark Arts would. I will speak for you.”  
  
Macgeorge closed her eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I’ll owe you a favor.”  
  
“I’m doing this because my sense of justice demands it,” Terry said. “Not because I want you to owe me a debt, or any other reason. Do you understand?”  
  
Macgeorge smiled slightly at her. “Yes, Auror Terry. Thank you anyway.”  
  
Terry waved a dismissive hand and turned towards the door. Draco opened his mouth. Harry tried to nudge away the impulse to speak, but it was too late.  
  
“Auror Terry,” Draco said, and at least his voice was quiet. “Do you know what happened to Auror Elder? We worked with him briefly on part of this case, but he vanished the last time that Auror Jenkins returned to the Ministry.”  
  
Terry frowned at them, but Harry had the sensation that her mind was far away, already working on presenting Macgeorge’s case to a bunch of unsympathetic Aurors. “I don’t know what happened to him, no. I heard a few people mention that he was going to be honored for undertaking a dangerous mission, but I haven’t heard anything about him working in the last few days. Perhaps he’s still in the middle of the holiday they gave him.” She smiled, something Harry would have found more comforting if it wasn’t such a wintry expression. “Or perhaps he’s in the middle of another dangerous mission. The reward for being good at your job is more work.”  
  
She left. Draco’s face had gone pale, and he stood still with his hands closed into such tight fists that Harry couldn’t insinuate his fingers into them even when he tried. Harry nodded at Macgeorge and the others.  
  
“You don’t need us now, do you?” he asked. “Macgeorge is probably going to be restored to being a full Auror, and we’ve successfully concluded the case you came to help us with.” He looked at Warren and Jenkins.  
  
“Do you think that we don’t consider Elder as part of the case we came to help you with?” Jenkins asked, staring at him. “We want to know where he went and who he was working for as much as you do.”  
  
“I don’t,” Rudie said, and smiled one more time at Macgeorge before turning to them with what looked like a normal expression for the first time in weeks. “I need to rest, and I want to stay with Nicolette.”  
  
“And I have no interest in finding Elder,” Macgeorge said. “I didn’t know him. Sorry.”  
  
“You should consider that we’re all Socrates Aurors, and that you may be required to help with someone else’s case in the future, as well,” Jenkins said, barely raising her voice above a whisper.   
  
“But this one is done,” Rudie said. “The twisted has been hunted down and captured, if you like. And Elder isn’t twisted, no matter what else he is. I have no interest in learning his secrets.”  
  
Draco tensed against Harry’s side for a second, and then relaxed. “Fine,” he said. “Go home and rest. You’ve earned it.”  
  
Rudie nodded to him and left. Macgeorge hesitated as if she didn’t want to be rude, but in the end, followed her partner.  
  
“Do you have any idea where to start looking?” Draco asked, turning to Jenkins and Warren as the Socrates office door shut behind the others.  
  
“Yes,” Warren said. “One idea came to mind while I was waiting for my wolf to bring you down. Elder’s assignment to the Socrates Corps was recent and sudden. The record of it should still be near the top of the piles of paper that the flunkies handle. Even if those papers don’t have the real reason that he came here, they have to say something. We can do worse than to try and find those papers.”  
  
Draco clenched his teeth instead of his hands this time. Harry knew what he wanted to say: that he wanted to locate Elder, and not words about Elder. That he wouldn’t feel secure until he knew who Elder was working for and whether Draco himself, or someone else, was under threat.   
  
“Fine,” he said at last. “But won’t looking for the paper in and of itself seem suspicious?”  
  
Jenkins and Warren smiled at each other, and Jenkins laid her wand against her face and closed her eyes. She began to whisper charms, which Warren echoed in a rustling voice that made Harry raise his eyebrows at her. Neither of the two appeared to notice.  
  
But Harry really noticed, and he knew Draco did, too, as Jenkins’s face began to change.  
  
It wasn’t a glamour, and it wasn’t Transfiguration. It was more as if Jenkins reached out and reshaped shadow and light and a bunch of other things that Harry hadn’t even really noticed were in the air of the room, and then draped them over her face in a new configuration. When she took her wand away again, it was a new person that stood there. Harry knew he wouldn’t have suspected that it was Jenkins even if someone told him. There was simply too much darkness in her hair, too much gentleness in the way she stood. She looked like someone who had been trained as a dancer.  
  
Harry looked into her eyes and tried to see Jenkins that way, tried to remember the Auror who was good at Dark magic and had a leopard as a Patronus and a mind locked to being taken over by her flaw. There was nothing there. He found belief sliding off his mind like rain off a window, and had to shake his head sharply to remember that this was Jenkins at all.  
  
“Where did you learn that spell?” Draco asked, in an oddly strangled voice. Harry glanced at him and found that he was staring at Jenkins with what Harry could only describe as a dreadful fascination. Harry moved nearer to him. Draco probably remembered a Dark spell like it from one of the books he’d read in his parents’ library, like the one he’d told Harry he’d found the soul-stealing spell in.  
  
“From someone who’s dead now,” Jenkins said, and nodded at Warren. “It can only be performed with a partner, anyway, so you might as well ask Thomasina where she learned it.”  
  
Warren gave them a serene smile, and said nothing. Harry shook his head. He didn’t see the point in asking further, not when it was clear that the disguise would prevent anyone from suspecting who was really asking about Elder. He stepped back and bowed to them a little. “Should we stay here?” he asked.  
  
“Yes,” Jenkins said. “I should go, and Thomasina should go with me to help recast the spell in case it shatters.” Harry opened his mouth to ask what that meant, but Jenkins had continued. “You can stay here and act like good little Socrates Aurors.”  
  
They slipped out of the room before Harry could argue. Draco still seemed frozen and staring. When the door shut, Harry turned to him.  
  
“Was that a spell you recognized?” he asked quietly.  
  
Draco nodded in silence. “I remember studying it along with things like the spell to rip a soul from a body,” he whispered. “I remember that it was said to be very hard to cast, and it literally won’t let someone else who wasn’t there when it was cast recognize the person. It baffles the mind the way that Occlumency shields do.”  
  
“Then that’s a good thing,” Harry said. “Isn’t it?”  
  
Draco shook his head. “I’m overtired,” he said. “I was thinking about the books in my parents’ library and how I was never going to see them again, and I started thinking that—maybe Elder was working for them. But he would never consent to cast Dark magic, like the kind that left that note stuck to the wall in hospital. So it has to be something else.”  
  
Harry stood quite still. He remembered the letter Draco had received from his parents, how it had threatened that Draco would be destroyed, and he thought of the kinds of spells Lucius and Narcissa would have access to. And he thought of Elder’s grudge against Draco, and the extreme coincidence that it was to have him suddenly assigned as Rudie’s new partner right when they were working a dangerous case.  
  
“Draco,” he whispered. “Maybe it’s not mental. Maybe—”  
  
Then the burning, blinding light of Elder’s flaw filled the office, and Harry was left to wish that he had reacted a little faster, a little earlier.


	19. Against the Light

Draco cast a Darkness Hex without thinking about it, the moment his eyes began to be blinded by that glowing light. He had had the spell in the back of his mind ever since he realized that Elder’s flaw was fire. Better to have it ready and not need it than to be cursing and stumbling in circles, the way Harry was.  
  
The cool blackness spread out around Draco like a pool of calm water, and he heard Elder curse him in a low and savage voice. Draco smiled with a bare movement of his lips, and began to work his way around to the left, keeping his back against the wall once he found it. “What’s the matter, Elder?” he whispered, casting another spell so that his voice would seem to bounce from several different directions. “Not so used to keeping your language in check when you serve Dark wizards?”  
  
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, and neither do you.” Elder’s voice was low and rough. “Your parents are trying to cut themselves off from their Dark pasts and become good people, and you are the one who would hold them back from that.”  
  
Draco laughed without sound, and paused, listening. He thought that Elder’s voice was coming from his right, but he wasn’t entirely sure. He forced himself to ignore the pained groans from Harry for right now. If Elder moved like—  
  
Then another flare of light cut the darkness, and Harry screamed. Draco caught a brief glimpse of Elder standing beside him, and then Elder said with some satisfaction, “There. Now I have your partner. If you make another move against me, I’ll make sure that he loses an eye or an ear.”  
  
Draco restrained the first outraged quiver in his muscles. He thought he knew what was happening, now. Elder’s words had cleared his mind to the state of a fine crystal. He flexed his wrists on his wand and waited until Elder began to seek him again. As Draco thought, that glow of light and fire hadn’t dissipated the Darkness Hex. Elder was unused to using his flaw except in the middle of battle, and when no one was immediately threatening you, magic based on emotions was usually harder to summon.  
  
“Don’t you care about your partner?” Elder’s voice had gone rough again. “I thought you would at least care about one that you took as your lover. Or do such distinctions no longer matter to a Dark wizard?”  
  
“You tell me,” Draco said, his voice booming from near his desk. Elder turned in that direction, as the brief blast of green light a moment later said. Draco chuckled, and Elder turned around and around, searching for him. He was drawing Harry with him, from the sounds, the shuffling and the soft gasps and moans. “How does it feel, Elder, to know that you’re serving Dark wizards, that you used Dark magic to leave that note for us in hospital?”  
  
“Lady Malfoy said the magic was not Dark.” Elder, by the sound of it, and certainly by the vision Draco was carrying in his mind, had gone stiff and still, listening.  
  
“And you  _believed_ her?” Draco laughed gently, and then began to move, out in a diagonal line, a path that would carry him past the desks. He was wagering that Elder didn’t know the Socrates office well enough to avoid them. “The word of a Dark witch, the wife and mother of former Death Eaters? Elder, Elder, Elder. I knew that you weren’t a good Auror, and that you  _were_ a fanatic, but I never thought you were this stupid.”  
  
Because that was it, of course, the only possible answer. Elder had been tricked by Lucius and Narcissa and become their pawn. A Light wizard who would get close to Draco, who had a previous grudge against him, who would believe that he was doing a good thing by murdering him. He had probably been their backup plan for some time, ever since they knew the Dementor might fail because of Harry’s skill at Patronuses.  
  
Elder obviously barked his shins on a desk in the next instant, and cursed. Draco moved, floated, towards him, listening all the while for Harry to make another move or noise. He had gone silent, and Draco didn’t think Elder had killed him. Elder would make it more of a production than that, announcing to Draco that he didn’t want to do it but the Chosen One had used too much Dark Arts, and so on and so forth. As long as Elder didn’t make an announcement of Harry’s death, Draco would choose to believe that Harry was alive.  
  
“You’re wrong,” Elder said, repeating it like a hymn. “I know that she didn’t lie to me. She couldn’t.”  
  
“Why not?” Draco had come to a halt between his desk and Harry’s. He reached out and braced his hands on them, gently enough that Elder didn’t seem to hear a sound. He knew there was nothing convenient to throw on them, but he knew where there would be. When he began to move again, he was aiming for Macgeorge’s desk.  
  
“She’s the mother of a Dark wizard who wants to separate herself from him.” Elder’s voice had gained strength, and Draco heard a kind of grunt that wizards tended to make when someone stabbed them in the back with a wand. Harry was alive, then, and under Elder’s control, but not for long. Draco smiled and kept moving. “That proves that she’s good, to want to put distance between herself and you.”  
  
Draco sighed, a loud and dramatic sigh, which would go whooshing around the room with the rest of his voice and confuse Elder, too. “But did you consider why she wanted to separate herself?”  
  
“Because you’re evil.” Elder said it in a way that made it clear it was one of his articles of faith. “The same reason that you managed to bedazzle the Boy-Who-Lived. You wouldn’t have gained control of him, and you wouldn’t have made him go Dark, if there wasn’t something fiendishly clever about you.”  
  
“Now I have to get rid of you,” Draco murmured. “The kind of wizard who says  _fiendishly_ and means it doesn’t deserve to survive.” He heard Harry snort, and then grunt again as Elder prodded him with his wand. Draco paused with the surface of Rudie’s desk beneath his hand. “Every pain that you inflict on my partner,” he added casually, “I’ll make you suffer. You might want to think about that.”  
  
“That’s what I mean about you being Dark,” Elder said, and Draco heard him jab his wand again. “You can’t take the slightest joke. You want to kill people for trivial things. You want to take revenge on me for disciplining a Dark wizard.”  
  
Draco said nothing else. He had reached his destination, the object he had been afraid to Summon for fear that Elder would figure out his intentions. He picked it up and held it close to him, cradling it for a moment. Yes, the glass was still intact, and although he knew that Rudie had taken it home at least once, the mummified hand rested inside. He could feel the dark thrum of necromancy like the spells that had powered the bones raining down on them in the clearing in the Forbidden Forest, and the wards on Cuthbert’s Corner.  
  
“Where are you, Draco?” Elder’s voice had moved a little, and again Draco heard the grunt that marked Harry’s presence. “I call you that, you see, instead of Malfoy, because you have no right to the name Malfoy anymore. Your parents are moving on, forgetting you, becoming Light wizards. They deserve to have an unmarred past and name.”  
  
“I’m sure Harry will let me take up Potter as a last name if I wish,” Draco said lightly, and touched his wand to the glass of the paperweight. It opened with a simple Peeling Charm, and he took out the hand. It clenched down briefly on his fingers, then opened and began to thrum. Draco nodded and cast other spells over it, Dark spells, silent spells, more spells from the books that his parents had owned.  
  
 _It suits me that their library should help me defeat someone they sent to destroy me._  
  
Draco smiled. The smile had little joy. He didn’t think that he would ever associate much joy with his memories of his parents ever again, now that they were set against him and might already have cast the spells that would allow them to forget. But what he had was his, the heritage of his mind and hands, and he would  _use_ it.  
  
“Draco?” Elder was dragging Harry with him by the arm now, Draco knew, and another spark of light marked the tip of his wand. “You should know there is no possibility that your lover will survive to give you his name.”  
  
Draco nodded. Of course Elder would say that. It was true, and besides, Elder was enough of an Auror to have noticed how threats to his partner would enrage him.  
  
But Draco had descended so far into that crystal state of mind that he felt like the glass that had encircled the paperweight. He picked up the mummified hand and held it lightly between his. The hand opened and closed into a fist, and Draco found himself stroking the back of it, laughing in something like joy.  
  
“Draco?” Elder had moved so that he now stood by Warren’s desk. “You don’t know how it pains me to have to end the life of a man who was once a powerful Light wizard, but I will do it if you don’t reveal yourself now.”  
  
“All right,” Draco said mildly. He touched his heart, and his forehead, and felt both heart and mind clear. He had come this far. He could kill without remorse now, and he thought that was the way it needed to be done. Elder would never listen to reason, or any attempt to explain how he had been tricked. Draco  _had_ tried. “I’ll give myself up as long as you show me that Harry is still alive first.”  
  
“I’m going to kill him immediately after you’re dead, but all right,” Elder said, and then another glow of light, one that Draco looked into this time, showed Elder with his burning arm looped around Harry’s neck. “Does this satisfy you?”  
  
 _You would make a horrid hostage negotiator,_ Draco thought, and nodded. “All right,” he said, and ended the charm that made his voice seem to come from every direction. Then another  _Finite,_ a more powerful one, ended the Darkness Hex and showed how close they were standing to each other.  
  
Elder looked at him, and there was a faint smile on his face, more in his eyes than on his lips. He shook his head a little. “You have no idea what you’re doing,” he whispered. “Thinking to murder me by flinging something at my head? Didn’t you  _know_ how easy it would be for me to avoid that?”  
  
“I didn’t think to murder you,” Draco said, and smiled at him. “Not  _exactly._ ” He bent down to the mummified hand, whispered, “Auror Elder,” and let it fly.  
  
The hand soared across the air between them. Harry leaned his head back, but he needn’t have feared, since there was only one victim named Auror Elder in the room. The hand closed around Elder’s throat and began to squeeze.  
  
Elder cried out in the moments before his air became too faint for him to speak, and he began to claw at the hand. Harry ducked out of his grip and raced across the office to Draco. Draco caught him close, kissing him once and looking him over for wounds, before he tucked Harry to his side so they could watch.  
  
The spells Draco had used weren’t pure necromancy, which he didn’t have Macgeorge’s gift for, but a combination of Dark hexes that were more potent yet when they  _did_ mingle with the necromancy on the mummified hand. His parents’ books had been full of spells like that, supposedly innocent in themselves, but deadly when they were mixed with some other kind of magic.  
  
And it was that mixture which was killing Elder now.  
  
Draco stood there and watched as the hand strangled Elder, the fingers curling around his throat and cutting off any chance that he could use his voice to end the torment. Of course, Elder might still have managed nonverbal magic, although Draco had never noticed that he had any particular gift for it. But it was a little hard to concentrate on a spell, nonverbal or not, when something was choking off your air that persistently.  
  
Elder’s own hands rose and pawed. His wand trembled for a second as though he would get it under the dry skin of the hand choking him and pry it off. Draco cast a Disarming Charm. The wand soared across to him. He slid it into Harry’s hand, and went on watching Elder die.  
  
“Draco.”  
  
That was Harry’s voice, low, close to his ears, and hoarse in a way that made Draco sure he knew what was coming next, although he tightened his shoulders against it. “What?” he whispered, not taking his eyes from Elder.  
  
“We can’t just let him die like this.  _Watch_ him die.” Harry shook his head and lifted his wand, as Draco saw from the corner of his eye. “We can kill him in battle, the same way that we did with the twisted to defend our own lives, but not in cold blood.”  
  
“What happens if he survives?” Draco whispered, just barely moving his own lips. He didn’t have to speak louder than that. His words filled the office, and Harry hesitated, looking at him. “What will he do next, in his conviction that he deserves to be able to kill me and my parents deserve to be able to put me aside? Do you think he’ll stop? This  _is_ self-defense. It just takes a little longer.”  
  
Harry closed his eyes and exhaled. Draco thought he could feel the balance of Harry’s mind wavering, tipping, not between madness and sanity, but between love for Draco and loyalty to the law. Draco caught his hand and stood there with him, in silence, not saying anything. He wouldn’t try to stop Harry, but—  
  
Harry said, “ _Finite Incantatem_ ,” in a voice like thunder, and aimed his wand at the mummified hand.  
  
The fingers spasmed open, and it dropped to the floor. Draco watched it, and said nothing, although his heartbeat was painful in his ears.  
  
Elder staggered a few steps, coughing. His hands went up to his throat, massaging, and he winced as he touched the bruises. Draco thought of the way his voice would come out, the thickness in the back of it, and tried to think to himself that he was satisfied with that as a punishment.  
  
But he wasn’t. He  _couldn’t_ be. His mouth ran with bile, and he licked his lips, shaking his head.  
  
“You dared to do that,” Elder whispered, and he was looking at Draco. Draco lifted his wand, although his wrist ached with weariness. He had come up with the  _perfect_ way to kill Elder, one that would be blamed on a necromantic artifact gone out of control, rather than on him. Why couldn’t Harry leave it alone?  
  
It hadn’t changed things. Elder nodded to Harry, said, “I suppose even a Dark wizard can have a moment of conscience,” and focused on Draco again, reaching towards his stolen wand with trembling fingers. Draco clutched it tighter.  
  
“I saved your life,” Harry said. “I claim the life-debt. What I want is for you to leave Draco alone.”  
  
Draco stared at him. That was an unexpectedly clever twist of the idea, and not something he would have thought Harry had come up with at all. Perhaps he  _would_ be forced to respect Harry’s knowledge of pure-blood customs.  
  
Elder laughed dryly. “I don’t respect any custom or institution which has been used to shelter Dark wizards,” he whispered. Already his voice was growing stronger, and although he didn’t have his wand, the look of implacable hatred that he turned on Draco still made Draco chill and heat at the same time. “Which life-debts have been. If you’ll stand out of the way, Auror Potter, then I’ll arrest you in a little while.”  
  
“What for?” Harry’s voice was hushed. Draco wondered if it was in awe at Elder’s stupidity. God knew that  _he_ felt rather that way.   
  
“Because you used Dark magic in the skull-house,” Elder said, his voice near-pitying as he glanced at Harry and then away. “You didn’t think that you were going to get  _away_ with something like that, did you?”  
  
“I thought—I thought you might give more consideration to someone who saved your life.” Harry sounded a little dazed.  
  
Elder nodded. “Understandable, but not likely in this case, Potter. You’re still trying to shelter a partner who’s murdered multiple people and whose parents want to be rid of him. For the sake of Light wizards trying to start lives of their own, if nothing else, he has to die.” He moved another step forwards.  
  
“How can you kill him?” Harry demanded, turning so that he stood between Draco and Elder. “You don’t have a wand.”  
  
Elder’s arm began to glow with light. “My gift will help,” he said. His eyes had found Draco’s, and he didn’t intend to look away, or at least Draco thought that was the meaning of his glance, as long as they were both alive. “Please clear out of the way, Auror Potter. I would prefer not to implicate you in either self-defense or defense of a Dark wizard.”  
  
Harry shut his eyes. “Draco,” he said. “You know that I love you.”  
  
Draco would have liked to snap something about how he would have appreciated the sentiment more if it didn’t sound like Harry was about to choose between him and Elder, but Elder interrupted first. “That is another mistake, Auror Potter. Dark wizards are incapable of love. You must not mistake what he says and does for the behavior of someone in love.”  
  
Draco wanted to destroy him. The desire held him still where he stood, because he couldn’t comprehend how badly he wanted to  _hurt_ Elder. There were many things he might have said, many he might have done, and still his body flamed with terrible and pure hatred.  
  
“I’m sorry for interfering,” Harry went on in a low voice. “I still wanted him to die humanely, not in a bloodthirsty way, but I should have remembered who we were dealing with.”  
  
The light had made its way along both Elder’s arms by now. He raised them and shook his head. “You think you have Dark gifts,” he said. “I’ve learned about both of them, what they are and what they did. You  _know_ that you won’t be able to stop me. They’re defensive. The Light has succeeded in granting me a gift that is offensive, perfectly matched to yours and more powerful.”  
  
“The Light,” Draco said, and he didn’t recognize his own voice, so deep had it become. “And you think that you were assigned to the Socrates Corps by  _accident_ , Elder?”  
  
“I was assigned because your former parents wanted me to get close to you and remove you,” Elder said. “No other reason.” His gaze was unwavering, his arms lifted as though to gesture flame and light down on him and Harry.  
  
“You fit in,” Draco said. “Because that gift you call Light is the equivalent of Nicolette’s necromancy, and my ability to sense Dark magic, and Harry’s visions. That  _gift_ is a  _flaw,_ you idiot. You’re on the verge of being twisted, the same way we are.”  
  
Elder went still, staring at him. And Draco took a step forwards, because in Elder’s own stillness Draco had seen the seeds of a way to destroy him more thoroughly than Macgeorge’s mummified hand would have.  
  
“Why do you think the Ministry hierarchy didn’t argue against you transferring into the Socrates Corps?” he asked, while Harry hovered behind him and said nothing. Draco hoped that he would continue to say nothing. He loved Harry, yes, but he had interfered enough in what was essentially a private conflict between Draco and Elder. “They didn’t all know your plan, and they wouldn’t all have agreed with it if they had. They let you go because you’re flawed. You’re on the edge of sanity. Sometimes that happens to the rest of us.” He let the memory of becoming twisted under the pressure of Healer Alto’s flaw flood his mind, and linger in the back of his eyes as he looked at Elder. “You just don’t know it.”  
  
“You can’t be sure of that.” Elder’s lips were drawn back from his lips. “I’ve never studied the Dark Arts—”  
  
“But you knew enough of them to create Dark magic in hospital that I  _felt_ ,” Draco said, and reached towards the Mark on his left arm. “Does that sound like the action of an innocent man? Does anything that you’ve come up with so far sound  _innocent_? Or does it sound like the claims of a Dark wizard trying frantically to justify why he isn’t insane or Dark?”  
  
Elder fell back a step. Draco hadn’t expected that tactic to work so well, so fast, but now that it had, he wasn’t about to give it up, either. He pressed forwards, dropping his voice to a hiss.  
  
“That’s the way it begins, the process of becoming a twisted. You start to think that everything you did is natural and justified. We’ve hunted a twisted who was convinced that people randomly stopped being her friends and turned on her, because she didn’t know that her flaw was turning other people into twisted. We’ve hunted a man who thought he was justified to cast other people into comas, because that would somehow be better than living with their flaws. He was like you, in fact,” Draco said, and moved closer and closer, while Elder cowered into a corner. “He thought he was justified in destroying other people, other twisted, the ones most like him. The only idea that came to him was that, well, why  _not_? The world shouldn’t be polluted with their presence. But he was mad all the same.”  
  
“I cannot be mad.” Elder had stopped retreating and stood with his arms folded, glowing with the light of his flaw.  
  
“Because you think you aren’t? Only those who are absolutely convinced that they’re sane are mad.” Draco reached for his left sleeve, never taking his eyes from Elder. This was the moment, the moment when he knew that his means of pressing Elder would stand or fall. “Then look at my Mark, at a moment when the only magic in this room is your own.”  
  
He turned his left arm towards Elder so that there was no mistaking it, and pulled his sleeve back.  
  
Elder stared. Then he shut his eyes and flung his hand over them.  
  
Draco looked down to see the Mark looking sorer and more irritated than ever. That might have been with its exposure to the soul-stealing spell and the magic he had used on the mummified hand as much as anything else, but Elder didn’t know that.  
  
Draco lowered his arm and smiled at Elder. “Dark wizard,” he whispered.  
  
Elder screamed. Draco started. He had hoped for this, in some ways, but it was still hard to hear the sound of someone’s soul shattering.  
  
Elder continued to scream, without break, without breath. He raised his own left arm, and Draco ducked back, ready to get between Elder and Harry and block any blast of fire that Elder might fling.  
  
But Elder thrust his hand into his mouth. That blocked the sound of the scream, but not enough. Draco saw the moment when his eyes flared, and then he shut them, and directed the fire blazing along his skin into his own throat.  
  
There was a burst of brief brilliance, as the light cut through Elder’s mouth and ears, eyelids and nostrils. Through the singe of burning hair, Draco watched in silence as his body slumped to the side, and his hand slid out of his mouth. He watched as the fire went out, and the scent of burning flesh grew worse.  
  
“What happened?” Harry whispered in the ensuing silence.  
  
Draco reached back and took his hand. “He burned his brains out.”


	20. Out From Silence

Harry turned away from Draco, towards the office door. He would need to report the body, he was thinking, and make sure that Draco wasn’t blamed for the death. Of course, the way Elder had used to kill himself ought to show that it clearly was suicide, without any instigation on Draco’s part.  
  
The doors opened before he could get there, and Harry assumed a defensive stance without even thinking about it. He wouldn’t let someone hex Draco, or hurt him. He should have defended himself against Elder better, and not cost Draco all those hexes and attempts to kill him and protect Harry at the same time.  
  
But it was Warren who entered. She swept the office with a critical look, and paused when she saw Elder lying in the corner. “Ah,” she said softly. “So he got here before I could stop him. I’m sorry,” she went on, turning towards Harry. “I would have done something if I could have, but the interrogation of Macgeorge and their decision to accept her as an Auror temporarily until they could set up a more formal hearing took a long time.”  
  
Harry nodded shortly. “Who told you where he had gone?”  
  
Warren smiled grimly. “No one, as such. But someone mentioned that they had thought he would come as a witness, and then someone else hushed them. That made me suspicious.” She shifted her weight for a second, and then asked, “How did you manage to kill him?”  
  
“He committed suicide,” Draco said coolly. “Sticking his hand in his mouth, and swallowing the fire that burned out from his fingers.”  
  
Warren blinked for a moment. Then she said, “Ah, well. There will be questions, you know that. Whoever was using him to hunt you—”  
  
“My parents,” Draco interrupted.  
  
“He had to have collusion from the Ministry hierarchy,” Harry said at the same time. Draco paused and looked at him. Harry held his eyes, ready to defend that opinion if Draco questioned him. “Well, he did. Someone had to protect him and look the other way when he came after us and hide him when we came back from the Forbidden Forest. And make sure that he was assigned to the Socrates Corps in the first place, of course.”  
  
“We’ll find the name,” Warren said, with the solid calm that Harry admired in her. “In the meantime, come upstairs and make a clean breast of it now, before someone else finds him or they start making up the story for you.”  
  
“Are they still interrogating Macgeorge?” Draco asked, letting Harry prod him ahead with his wand. Warren led the way, and Harry relaxed a little. He felt safer when Draco was between two people, more sheltered from any curses that might come his way. He did pause and turn to enchant Elder’s body to float behind them with  _Mobilicorpus_. It didn’t look too horrible from the outside, and maybe someone would react when they came into the meeting room with it accompanying them and betray a hidden affiliation with the conspiracy.  
  
“They’re still assembled,” Warren said, and jerked her head up the corridor. “Hurry, and you can catch them.”  
  
Harry caught Draco’s eye, and had to bite his lip and grin a little. They were hurrying wildly towards what Harry had always considered a kind of personal nightmare, facing Ministry flunkies and officials with the sole purpose of judging them. But then again, this time they had reason.  
  
*  
  
No one flinched visibly when they carted Elder’s body into the room—or at least, no one did it in a guilty way. There were stares and murmurs, and more than one person stood up in their seat to see Elder and try to envision a way he could have died, from their faces. But they sat down again, and smoothed their faces out.  
  
Draco could feel the hostility all around them, the hostility that beat and shimmered around them like heat, that would have penetrated their bodies and worked its way down into their bones if they stayed there for long. He had always been skeptical about claims like that, but then, he had never been in front of an audience of people who hated him so much, either. Even the Wizengamot, when he went before them to be tried after the war, had been more bored and indifferent.   
  
He wondered if his parents would feel like this if he went before them now.  
  
Draco shook his head. He was going to forget about that for right now. He and Harry had a right to defend themselves, and everyone else had to listen to them. He turned around and faced the long table where the highest officials of the Ministry sat. Harry took his place beside him, Warren slightly behind, and Elder’s corpse came up to float off to the side.  
  
Of course, the first one to lean forwards and try to fix them with a stern eye was Okazes, who had always hated them. He frowned when neither of them bent their necks and exchanged a glance with the woman beside him. Draco knew her vaguely, Genevieve Edelstein. She was a tall woman with iron-grey hair and a nose that put Professor Snape’s to shame. She sniffed a little at them and said, “Is there a reason that you’ve come into the room with a corpse?”  
  
“This is Auror Elder, who a short time ago tried to kill me,” Draco said.  
  
He watched faces, and saw Edelstein grimace, and Okazes’s eyes pop, and a few other people flinch or make gestures of disgust. No one looked especially guilty, though. Maybe they’d had peripheral knowledge but hadn’t known much about the real reason Elder joined the Socrates Corps, Draco thought. He hoped that Jenkins could find more incriminating evidence in her search among Elder’s records.  
  
“How did he die?” Edelstein asked. Her face had gone back to its harsh mask, and she folded her hands as though she wanted to scratch strips of wood up from the table and was restraining herself.  
  
“He committed suicide,” Draco said. “When he learned that he might have used Dark magic and convinced himself it was Light under the pressure of his own desire to think he was innocent, he put his hand in his mouth and directed fire down his throat.”  
  
That caused another stir, but Draco attributed this one more to the grotesque manner of Elder’s death than anything else. He could see Harry beside him, his eyes darting around, trying to locate  _someone_ who would reveal what they needed to know. Draco checked a sigh. Of course this wouldn’t be easy, because nothing was for them.  
  
“I think you should tell us what happened from the beginning,” Okazes said, and Draco reckoned it wasn’t a bad attempt to sound commanding, if you had never listened to anyone who had the real gift for it.  
  
Draco told most of the story, starting from his conflict with his parents and their letter saying he was disinherited, with Harry jumping in to tell the story of the Dementor and how Elder had fought with them and then declared most of their magic Dark. They fudged certain details, of course. No need for these august Aurors to know that Draco knew soul-stealing magic, or that he and Harry had done illegal things in pursuit of their case. They didn’t need to know about Rudie’s necromancy to dissipate the wards on Ernhardt’s door, either, or the location of Cuthbert’s Corner, or—many things.  
  
But at least their tale had few visible seams, Draco thought. And Warren stood beside them, watching, not interfering. Draco thought she would at least have blinked or tapped her throat with her finger if she disapproved of what they were saying.  
  
When he had finished, there was silence for some time. Draco waited, and waited, and waited. He did his best not to show his surprise on his face, although he was afraid that he wasn’t successful. And Harry was gaping, a moment before he shut his mouth with a click of teeth and his eyes darted back and forth between Okazes and Edelstein, whom he seemed to consider the most dangerous.  
  
Draco would have expected more questions. They would leap at the chance to punish him and Harry, if they could. And he didn’t dare hope that the silence meant Edelstein, Okazes, and the others were impressed.  
  
Finally, Edelstein picked up a folder that lay in front of her. It was slim, and somehow familiar. Draco saw an amber-colored stain on the back of the folder that he thought he’d seen before.  
  
He was still staring when Edelstein glanced up, gave him a hard, cool smile, and murmured, “How familiar are you with the various definitions of twisted that the Ministry has come up with, Auror Malfoy?”  
  
 _She hesitated a second before she said my title,_ Draco noticed, and saw from the way Harry’s neck muscles stiffened that he had noticed the same thing. Draco couldn’t see whether Warren had or not. She was still standing there just out of Draco’s sight, and he didn’t dare turn his head to look at her, because he didn’t dare take his eyes off his enemies.  
  
“I know the five basic tenets,” Draco said, and was astonished to hear the glacial way his voice came out. Perhaps, after dealing with Ernhardt and his parents, it took more than this to frighten him. “Based on the classification of the Dark Lord Voldemort, after the fact, and historical research to find other Dark Lords in history. They have a flaw, a gift of wandless magic that renders them powerful. They have a symbol, the way the Dark Lord had the Dark Mark.” He didn’t touch his left arm, because they would expect him to, and at the moment, any gesture of resistance he could make towards them was a good thing. “They have companions, usually either wizards they’ve enchanted to go along with them, or creatures created as a side effect of their flaw. They use only Dark Arts in battle, although they may use more ordinary spells in non-battle situations. And they cannot use Healing magic.”  
  
“Exactly,” Edelstein said, and nodded, and went on nodding for a moment after she should have stopped.  
  
And Draco knew. He knew what was coming. The words welled out of his mouth before he could even consider not uttering them. “You can’t accuse  _us_ of being twisted.”  
  
“Why not?” Edelstein’s eyes never left him as she drew the folder towards her again. “You each have a symbol.” Her glance darted to Draco’s left arm, to Harry’s forehead. “You have companions—the other Aurors that you enchanted to work with you, when at first they held aloof and appeared to dislike you.” This time, her eyes went to Warren, and her face softened a little. “It is known that you both have flaws. That you both use Dark Arts. It is harder to prove the lack of Healing magic, but you both visited private Healers and Mind-Healers after Mr. Potter was banned from St. Mungo’s. That  _does_ rather suggest that you can’t Heal yourselves.”  
  
“Healers are specialists.” Harry’s voice was calm. Only this close to him did Draco know how strong the vibrating, tense surface of that calm was, how close it was to snapping. “Of course we would visit them rather than try to cast the spells on ourselves.”  
  
Edelstein waved one hand. “It is well-known that twisted sometimes surface who lack one or more of those traits, but are twisted nevertheless.”  
  
Draco felt like vomiting. Yes, that was true—and he and Harry had been the first Socrates Aurors to submit reports after cases with that particular suggestion embedded in them.  
  
 _Will they really make our own words a noose to hang us with?_  
  
One more careful look at Edelstein told him the truth.  _Yes, they will. And they’ll enjoy it._  
  
Edelstein leaned forwards slowly now, her fingers creeping across the table like spiders aiming for a trapped and struggling fly. Draco stared at them and fought to keep from clenching his fists or actually getting sick. They would like that, wouldn’t they, the smug bastards who thought they could get rid of him and Harry by catching them in this trap?   
  
“Madam Edelstein,” Harry said at Draco’s side, his voice so calm that Draco looked at him from the corner of his eye to be sure Harry understood what was going on, “if the definition of the twisted is flexible enough to bear that much change, doesn’t that argue we  _shouldn’t_ be treated as twisted? Not until they’ve shown that we’re insane and a danger to others, in any case. If the twisted can have only one or two traits, that would cover a lot of other wizards, as well, and the  _real_ twist should be whether they’re hurting other people.”  
  
Edelstein’s mouth twisted gently. “Don’t you understand?” she whispered. “You  _did_ hurt other people.”  
  
“We killed twisted under the permission of the Socrates Corps.” Harry was standing tall, his hands at his sides. Draco continued to watch him, because he didn’t understand what Harry’s game was. Did he really think he could argue them around? “You can’t punish us by retroactively withdrawing that permission.”  
  
“She isn’t referring to twisted that you killed in the course of your cases,” Okazes said, striking in as though anxious that Edelstein shouldn’t get all the glory of condemning them. From the way Edelstein’s head twitched, Draco didn’t think she was pleased at yielding her place, but she didn’t say anything. “She’s referring to Head Auror Ernhardt.”  
  
“Excuse me?”  
  
 _Can’t you feel it?_ Draco wanted to ask them, all of them, the people sitting on the other side of the table from them, the people standing up now to watch Harry Potter losing his appeal, or maybe Draco Malfoy crashing down to an end that most of them would think was well-deserved.  _Can’t you feel the way his magic’s rising?_  
  
So this was the way it ended, Draco thought. Harry must have decided that this was the end, that they wouldn’t be able to argue Edelstein and Okazes and the rest of them around, or he wouldn’t have come this far.   
  
But the magic was there, coiled around him, that endless, glittering strength Draco had felt when Harry was battling Ernhardt in the trap they had set up for him, and a few other times. It was only desperation that brought it out, Draco knew.   
  
Draco swallowed and resisted the urge to touch Harry’s elbow. Harry might be right that nothing could save them now, and Draco didn’t want to distract or slow him down in the meantime. He waited.  
  
“So,” Harry was saying in a conversational tone. “Why would you count Ernhardt as one of the people we hurt, instead of a twisted that we hunted down?”  
  
“What evidence do we have that Head Auror Ernhardt died in the way you said he did, other than your word?” Edelstein sat back and folded her hands. She had a very faint smile on her face. Draco couldn’t remember any personal grudge she had against them, but on the other hand, she might rejoice in being the one to finally get rid of two very troublesome Aurors. “That is all we have. That is all we ever  _can_ have.”  
  
“Of course,” Draco said. “Now that he’s dead. I suppose the word of Auror Macgeorge isn’t good enough for you, when she told you that she was imprisoned in her own mind and body by the will of Ernhardt?”  
  
“Auror Macgeorge has obviously been through an ordeal,” Okazes said, sounding as though he, too, rejoiced in being here at their fall. “She was insane for part of the time, which she has admitted. It’s the only explanation for her undoubted practice of necromancy during that time. But precisely because she was mad, she cannot be treated as a reliable witness.”  
  
 _That’s the way it’s to be, then._ Draco settled his shoulders and caught Harry’s eye, nodding a little. Harry gave him a small nod in return, but still faced Edelstein and Okazes. He would get them back their position in the Aurors if he could, Draco knew. Well, he was not against Harry doing what he could.  
  
Only in going beyond that, and exhausting himself in the service of an ideal that Draco realized, now, was tarnished, and had probably never been what they thought it was.  
  
“Listen,” Harry said. “We were told to take up this case, the case of Ernhardt, because it was an embarrassment to the Aurors and we had already failed to capture him once. That makes him a twisted we hunted, like Healer Alto or Nancy Morningstar. If we killed him, then we only acted as we were supposed to, once we became Socrates Aurors.”  
  
“But we do not believe Ernhardt survived the death of his body,” said Edelstein delicately. “We have already introduced our objections to Auror Macgeorge as a witness. She was mad, and we must have compassion for that, but also, she cannot be trusted.”  
  
“You only want to get rid of us, then,” Harry said. “You don’t want to admit that a twisted could have fooled you and acted as your Head Auror for so many years.”  
  
“It’s interesting,” said Okazes, “that you never brought up these accusations until after you both became part of Socrates Corps and were partnered. Are we to believe that that frightened him so badly he began to demonstrate his twisted powers, which no one had ever mentioned before?”  
  
“He possessed you too, you wanker,” Harry said pleasantly. “Not that you remember, because his taint probably faded into the rest of the foulness in your mind.”  
  
Okazes flushed and started to open his mouth, but Edelstein rested her hand on his wrist. “Is that necessary?” she asked, her eyes not leaving Harry’s. “Discourtesy to a superior whom a moment ago you were trying to impress with your knowledge of the rules?”  
  
“He’s not a superior if we’re not Aurors,” Harry said. “And we’re not. You let us come here to strip us of our titles, didn’t you? You’ve wanted an excuse to get rid of me for a while, and you probably expected Draco to die before now, once his parents began that stupid pure-blood process of forgetting him. You sheltered Auror Elder, who tried to kill him.  _Someone_ had to look the other way while Elder transferred into the Socrates Corps and made accusations against Draco. Was it you?”  
  
“Mr. Potter,” Edelstein said, and her face had started to turn pink, “this is inappropriate.”  
  
“Damn right it is,” Harry said. “It’s there, in the title you’re calling us by. You’ve already made your decision. What’s inappropriate is for us to stand around in the middle of this bloody farce.” He lifted his wand.  
  
Warren stirred behind them. Draco wondered if she intended to help them or not. He decided it didn’t matter, because Harry’s spell had already lifted, soaring high to bounce off a stone set at the corner where two walls met. When it hit that stone, it divided, refracting, dropping onto the heads of several of the watching Aurors. They dropped to the floor in reaction, Stunned.  
  
Harry flipped a mocking salute and a smile that Draco wished he could savor for himself, sweet and bright, and then turned around and grabbed Draco by the arm. Warren looked once into their eyes and stepped out of their path.  
  
“Go,” she hissed, while Draco watched her in case she changed her mind. “I can cover your retreat in the confusion and pretend I’m trying to capture you, but I can’t do that for long. You don’t have much time.”  
  
Draco nodded once to her and began to run. He wasn’t sure what they would do once they got beyond the Ministry, where they would go, or even if they ought to stop and grab something from their desks in the Socrates office, files that might reveal too much to unfriendly people who went through them.  
  
But then he caught another glimpse of Warren, waving her wand and yelling in a distracting fashion, and relaxed a little. He thought she and Jenkins would make sure that no one else got the chance to go through anything except what would prove them innocent.  
  
*  
  
Harry could feel the exhilaration pouring through him like blood as he came out into the middle of the corridor and paused, panting and turning his head from side to side. The walls around them all looked the same, with no signs pointing to safety. The confused babble of voices from the room behind them would attract attention soon, he knew. They were just lucky that so many Aurors had been in there to watch the travesty of justice Edelstein had wanted to play out, or they would have been pursued before now.  
  
“Aurors.”  
  
Harry knew that voice, had last heard it giving crisp advice to Macgeorge. He turned at once, his hand falling to the wand at his waist.  
  
Auror Terry stood behind them, eyes so piercing that Harry knew he would never be able to think of her as innocent or doll-like again. She looked from one to the other of them, and Harry thought she gathered most of the relevant facts that way. He wondered absently if she was a Legilimens.  
  
Then he remembered that what mattered more than anything else was that she was an enemy. She would ally with the Auror hierarchy both because she wouldn’t want to risk herself and because she would think Harry and Draco had gone beyond the pale.  
  
“Stay back,” Harry told her quietly, aiming his wand. Draco braced his elbow against Harry’s, then tugged, reminding him they had more important things to do than stand here and talk to Terry.  
  
Terry only shook her head a little, never looking away even when Harry started to incant. “If they declare Macgeorge innocent, when they know perfectly well that she committed crimes under the influence of someone else, then they should do the same thing with you.”  
  
“We weren’t possessed,” Draco snapped back at her. “Harry, come the fuck on.”  
  
Terry spoke as though she didn’t hear the swirling chaos in the other room approaching the doors. “I know that. But you tried to obey the rules, and you went outside them only when it came to a situation that there are no rules for. You restored Macgeorge to herself. You destroyed perhaps the most dangerous threat we’ve faced as Aurors since the Dark Lord, if what Macgeorge and Rudie were saying was true. You need help.”  
  
“What do you propose to do about it?” Harry asked quietly.  
  
“Help you,” said Terry, and cast a spell at the doors that made them stick fast. “Auror Malfoy, your file says that you have friends in the Demlan Werewolf Pack. Do you still have them?”  
  
Draco’s mouth fell open a little. Then he said, “I can’t go to them. The Ministry will know that from my file, too, and they’ll revoke the pack’s permission to exist if they think that they’re sheltering us.”  
  
“Hide yourselves well enough, and they don’t need to know,” Terry said, ignoring the frantic pounding on the doors. “Werewolves are good at keeping secrets, aren’t they? Find evidence that will prove yourselves innocent, and come back.”  
  
“What kind of evidence would that be?” Harry demanded.  
  
“I can’t do everything for you,” said Auror Terry crisply. “Go find it. Remember that they’re going to be hunting you now—as twisted?” Harry nodded, no longer really surprised she knew about that even though she wasn’t part of the Socrates Corps, not if she knew private things from Draco’s file. “Good. Then go.” She turned to face the doors.  
  
Draco tugged on Harry’s arm, and they turned and began to run.  
  
Harry thought as they ran. They had enemies somewhere in the Ministry hierarchy, the people or person who had supported and protected Elder. They had been declared outlaws. The Aurors would have the permission to kill them on sight, as twisted. They had a few allies here, but not many. They couldn’t go to any of their friends for long, or their friends would come under suspicion, too. Draco’s parents had turned against them, and no longer even knew who he was.  
  
They would have to run far, and long, and fast, and hunt down their enemies at the same time.  
  
Harry reached out and took Draco’s hand, and together, they began the first steps of that long run, away from the silence behind them, into light and noise.  
  
 **The End.**


End file.
